


all the messes we made

by theviolonist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Multi, Road Trips, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1516790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn considers Harry's Audi contemptuously. The sadness leaves his eyes for a second, replaced by a dangerous, exhilarating kind of frown. </p><p>"This is such a bad car for a road trip," he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright. Alriiight. 
> 
> So, first things first, I started this two - three? - years ago, so a lot of the timeline (if it can be called that) in this story is set then. 
> 
> Second, this story calls for major suspension of disbelief, so that you can accept that a) going around Europe in an overpriced car can actually be called a roadtrip, and b) the itinerary in this story makes any kind of sense. It doesn't. It just doesn't. Accept it, and move on.
> 
> Third, when I say slow burn, I mean _slow_ , as in, "I have 65K of this story on my laptop and they've kissed exactly once," slow.
> 
> And, I guess that's it? Once upon a time junkshop_disco helped with Brighton locations and I'm really grateful to her for that; I know I said I wasn't going to write in this fandom anymore, but I lie all the time and I also hate leaving things unfinished, and I probably won't update regularly but you can expect somewhat frequent updates until I run out of stuff I've already written, given that I get off my ass and actually edit it. 
> 
> Enjoy!

He finds Zayn behind the church, smoking. 

"Hey."

Zayn tilts his head to acknowledge him. "Hey," he says. "Fancy a smoke?"

Harry shakes his head. He doesn't really want to smoke right now. The punch is doing funny things to his stomach. He's trying to quit, anyway. 

"Lou told me where you were," he says, for lack of something else to say. 

"Mm," Zayn says, pulling off the cigarette to blow an imperfect ring of smoke. It's pretty clear that he doesn't mind Harry being there but he's not in the mood for conversation. Harry doesn't mind that, for the most part. He's never been good at cheering people up. Most of the time the reason they're sad doesn't make sense to him; this plain eludes him. 

They linger in silence for a few minutes, the noise from inside trickling from the open doors at the front, a steady stream of raucous congratulations and the musical tittering of children. It's hot. Liam would want to have a summer wedding. Anyway, it's not like Harry can imagine Danielle getting married in the winter, either: when it's cold her tan fades and she looks quietly miserable, like she's waiting for the sun to come back. 

Harry thinks about the party, how everyone looked when he left, Liam flushed with happiness, his arm tight around like Danielle's waist like he was afraid the wind would blow her away. He likes weddings much more than he likes the industry parties they still have to go to from time to time. He doesn't mind the heavy thumping of clubs, the sweat and the glitter and the cautious anonymity, the way dancing in the dark with other equally famous people makes you more or less invisible, makes a lot of what you do forgettable—but most of the time the things they have to go to are red carpets with prawn canapés and barely-concealed disdain from industry people, like just because they used to be the most famous boy band on the block means they can't hear when someone snickers behind their back. This is better. He shakes his hair back into place, glances at Zayn who's still leaning against the wall, looking right in front of him. Harry wonders what he sees in the horizon cluttered with quaint, identical middle-class houses, the sun like a big round button in the sky, blinding. 

"You okay, mate?" he asks. It's the least he can do, really. 

Zaun turns towards him, probably sensing that the worry is real. He flashes a poor smile rigged with teeth. "'M fine," he says. "Don't worry about me, Hazza."

Harry bites down that he has reasons to worry, that he just wants them all to be there for each other, like they'd promised. He's not seventeen anymore. "Yeah," he says. "Okay."

He turns around to leave. When he's taken a few steps, the party appearing at the corner of his eyes, the gravel strewn with white streamers, he says, "We're going to Liam and Dani's now, I think. Celebrate and all that."

They both know that Louis's got something planned, a fancy caterer and presents worth thousands of pounds, all the extravaganza Liam wouldn’t think of because Liam is Liam and having money is still surreal to him, after all this time, and he feels a little guilty for being rich. Louis has no such qualms – he squanders all of it happily, spouting ridiculous maxims about life not lasting forever and whatnot. That's a part of why Harry loves him so much: his panache, the way he goes about life grandly and without care for the future, insisting on finding joy and anger in the smallest things. It makes him annoying sometimes but it also makes him one of the best, most lively people Harry has ever met. 

"Be there in a jiff," Zayn mumbles. 

Harry sighs.

When he goes back inside, Liam is kissing a giddy Danielle's throat, one of the straps of her dress falling off her shoulder. He's a little red – he's never been one for PDA – but he looks like a kid on the morning before Christmas, overwhelmed with happiness, eager to tear off the wrapping and find out what's inside, the million ways to make a gift last. Harry winces on Zayn's behalf. Maybe he was right to finish that cigarette after all. 

Niall glances at him from where he's sitting on one of the church benches and chatting up one of the bridesmaids, a childhood friend of Danielle's they didn't know with her red hair done in a pretty braid. Harry shoots him a reassuring smile, trying to convey that Zayn's fine. He's not stellar, obviously, but it's not everyday that your best friend who you're in love with gets married, after all. They probably can all cut him some slack. 

Louis's hand on his arm draws him back to reality. "How's he?" he asks. 

Harry shrugs. There's no point in lying, especially to Louis. "He's not tearing his hair out or crying into a pillow," he says instead. _Good enough._

Louis pouts. Nothing is ever good enough for him. "We should take him out and get him drunk," he says, and starts scheming something involving strippers and tequila shots. Harry tunes him out after a little while, drawn back to Zayn's silhouette drawn in shadow crayon against the brick wall of the church. 

It's pretty brave of him to have stayed that long, really. If Harry had been in love with Liam the way Zayn is, he doubts he'd have borne the sickeningly adorable exchanging of vows. Or the kiss. Or the dance. Hell, any of it. They all know it would've hurt Liam if he'd left, but Harry knows pain is blind and selfish. In the moment, you never care about this kind of things. 

Liam claps his hands to call everybody to attention, then promptly wraps his arm back around Danielle's waist. There are grains of rice in both their hair. They look happy, relaxed and warm; the perfect newlyweds. 

"Guys," Liam says, and the smile is apparent through his voice. Harry sees Zayn slinking in from the corner of his eye, stepping smoothly into the crowd, the last strand of smoke melting out of his mouth. He nods at him to show him he's seen him. Zayn nods back. "We're going back to the flat to celebrate properly," Liam continues, and Harry looks over at Louis to see a sharp grin flash on his lips, "so you're all welcome and we'd love to have you here with us. Just follow our car, yeah?"

"We're the limo with the 'Just married' on it," Danielle chirps, and they all laugh. 

The limo is the only really fancy thing Liam had insisted on. No one begrudges him it, even though it intrigues Harry that he had such a precise idea of how his wedding day would go, down to the church he wanted to get married in. They'll have a celebration in Wolverhampton, too, at the church Liam's parents got married in, but this one Liam remembers from a trip when he was a kid. It's a little weird, but it's endearing. 

Harry runs up to Liam and throws an easy arm around his shoulder, shooting a grin at Danielle who's talking to a bunch of relatives. "Congratulations, mate," he says. They all congratulated him as soon as he stopped eating face with Danielle, of course, drew him in a group hug that threatened to crush his bones, but getting married deserves to be hugged more than twice, surely. 

Liam smiles at him, blinding and happy. Harry can't really blame him for being oblivious to Zayn's affections. "Thanks," he says. He rakes a hand through his hair, sighing softly. "I can't believe it," he says, more intimate, his voice filled with wonder. 

"Well, you better," Louis says loudly, coming up behind them with a manic grin on his face, "'cause after the party you've got a lady to satisfy."

He glances pointedly at Danielle, radiant and laughing in her white dress, and Liam shakes his head fondly, blushing even though they've all walked in on them fucking at one point or another during the years. Louis makes a mock-disgusted face, but really he's radiating happiness, too, because that's how it works with them. All for one and all that. "God, you're so adorable it's nauseating," Louis says, and pushes Liam away. "Go away, you gigantic romantic twat."

Liam laughs at that, but he does as he's told, grabbing Danielle's hand to drag her into an impromptu spin. Harry chuckles. He looks back to check up on Niall and Zayn – Niall's still charming the redhead who's got a hand on his forearm and a look on her face that bodes well for the evening, and Zayn's trailing after them, his hands stuck deep in his pockets. Harry thinks about going up to him but dismisses the idea. What would he even say? 

They get into the cars, Liam and Danielle in their swanky limo, laughing and poking at the champagne bottles stacked in the minibar, and the rest behind them. Niall has kicked Zayn out of his car so he's in Harry's Audi with Harry and Louis instead. He's silent in the back, fiddling with his headphones as Louis talks loudly about whatever crosses his mind, as usual, how wicked the party is going to be, how his attractions are going to be something to be behold, a massive fucking hit. 

It turns out to be true, of course, because Louis is nothing if not a fantastic party-planner. Liam and Danielle look appropriately surprised, there's a great DJ and amazing food and Louis had people come by before and put all the valuables and fragile things away, so there's something like a dance floor in the middle of the living-room. He even thought to warn the neighbours about the noise — that one Harry is actually impressed by, the rest is just standard Louis. 

He pats Louis's bum to express his appreciation, and Louis raises a haughty, judging eyebrow. "I know you appreciate my... _assets_ , Styles, but please keep it decent while we're in public."

He does deadpan remarkably well, and Harry bites his laughter into his lips. Louis grins back at him. It had floored Harry at first, how instantaneous their connection had seemed to be, like cracking a match and watching the flame flicker to life; now he's used to it. They both turn to the dance floor only to be welcomed by the sight of Liam and Danielle embracing, dancing slowly and whispering to each other, giggling like children. It's still a little crazy, them getting married so young, barely even twenty-five, but they look as happy as can be and Harry has difficulties imagining a world in which Liam and Danielle aren't happy together. 

He forgets to worry for a while, eats and drinks and laughs with everyone, flirting easily with anyone that comes over and challenging Louis into a body shots battle, until eventually it's five a.m. and everyone starts heading out. Niall is long gone, took the redhead home after eating half of the banquet with a pat on the shoulder to Liam and a kiss on Danielle's cheek. Louis is passed out on the couch, snoring and drooling on one of the stitched cushions Liam's mum insisted he take from home the first time they came over for Christmas, horrified at the IKEA neatness of the place. Harry doesn't even want to think about how bitchy he's going to be tomorrow, because this is going to be one hell of a hangover, considering how much he drank. Liam and Danielle are in a corner – their making out is getting a little down and dirty, so Harry decides it's probably time they show themselves out. 

He clears his throat. God, Liam's bra-unclasping technique has gotten smooth, there's no denying that. 

"Yes?" Liam asks, because he's nothing if not polite. He is, however, also a guy, and sounds appropriately like this had better be about something fucking important. 

Harry smirks. "We're going, yeah? We're leaving Louis here, he's dead asleep and I'm sure you can take this to your room. I don't feel like dragging him to the car."

"Okay," Liam says, even though it sounds more like a _whatever, go away_ , and gets right back to mauling Danielle. She laughs and pushes herself up, taking his hand and leading him to the bedroom. 

"Bye, guys," she says on the way, giggling when Liam seizes her hips and kisses her neck. He's probably had a fair amount to drink, too. He's going to be dead embarrassed tomorrow. 

Zayn is waiting near the door, sucking on yet another fag. His hollowed cheeks make him look entirely too skinny, which would be scary if Zayn were the type to starve himself over a broken heart. As it is, Harry twirls his car keys around his pinky and says: "Let's dash, or we're going to get the Liam Payne Gets Naughty Show, and it isn't something I want to see in my life ever."

He wants to bite his tongue as soon as he registers the slight wince on Zayn's face. He wishes alcohol wouldn't untie his tongue so much – he always ends up saying the most unfortunate things and revealing his most intimate secrets with a few vodkas too many in his bloodstream. He knows acknowledging it will only make it more awkward, though, so he just holds the door open for Zayn and they walk quietly into the street. 

The ride home is quiet. Zayn opens his window to blow his smoke outside and doesn't look Harry's way more than once, blinking at the street lights as Harry fiddles with the radio. He eventually finds a station airing "I can't be with you" by the Cranberries. He realizes half-way through it that it's probably a little cruel to Zayn, but it's still a good song and it's nearly finished, anyway. 

"'Cause you're not here, not here," he sings softly. Maybe he should've drunk more – he feels light like a balloon, like a mere gust of wind might make him float away. 

Eventually they reach Zayn's house and Harry's still anchored to his seat. They part silently – Harry hugs Zayn for as long as he'll let himself be hugged, fingers tangling in his hair. 

"See you tomorrow," he says when Zayn finally pulls away. Zayn just nods. 

Harry goes back to the house he shares with Louis. Even after they'd moved out of their bachelor pad —or orgy den, depending on which paper you're reading—, they couldn't find a reason not to live together. They weren't spared the obligatory rumours, of course, but it didn't really matter: they knew what was what and they were famous enough not to have to care. All their houses are still in the same neighbourhood – to be honest, Harry can't imagine a life where he couldn't take his nightly run to bother Niall as he tries to watch sports, a life without Louis bothering him as he cooks. 

The next few days are quiet and suffused with calm joy. They're on break because Liam and Danielle have their honeymoon in a few days, after they come back from Wolverhampton, so they're free to do pretty much what they want. It's nice, after a whole year spent promoting the new record, doing press and touring all over the world. They all need a break. 

Zayn doesn't brighten up. Harry hadn't expected him too, not so soon, but he can't help but be worried anyway. Zayn goes out almost every night, drinks and smokes and copes in the stupid way teenagers do, even though none of them is a teenager anymore. Harry feels like they're at an in-between, waiting for the explosion. He can't relax, his muscles coiled up and something like an itch simmering under his skin. He talks about it with Louis, but Louis shrugs it off, says it can't last forever. Everything will come back to normal. It has to. 

Harry gets the boys to come over the next Sunday night. Liam and Danielle are still in Wolverhampton, of course, but it's nice all the same, the four of them in Harry and Louis's living-room, eating greasy pizza and watching _The Mummy Returns_. Harry sees Zayn's eyes flash when he walks into the living-room. He remembers the scene too, with almost painful acuity: Harry and Louis were cuddled at one end of the couch, Louis playing with Harry's curls, and Zayn and Niall were playing FIFA distractedly, their knees knocking from time to time, a soft expletive breaking the silence at regular intervals. Liam was sitting on the floor, his back against Zayn's legs. Zayn doesn't like that, usually, says he doesn't like feeling trapped, but it was different with Liam. It's always different with Liam. 

"I think I'm going to propose," Liam had blurted out, and blushed immediately after, as though it was an indiscretion instead of a bombshell. 

Harry remembers hugging Liam until he couldn't breathe, because it had been in waiting, of course, everyone knew it would happen one of these days, but it was still something to hear it, to see it take form in front of your eyes. But he also remembers —and he wonders if he really saw it at the time or if he'd just glanced at Zayn's face it from the corner of his eye and forgotten to notice— Zayn looking choked up, like he couldn't breathe. He probably should've done something then. Hell, they all probably should've done something before it got to that point, but they were cowards and they didn't know how to talk about it or what to say, didn't want to get involved. 

"You want pizza?" Harry asks, handing Zayn a slice to distract him from his memories. He looks shellshocked.

"Thanks," Zayn says curtly, but he shoots Harry a look of warning that says, _don't feel sorry for me_. 

Harry thinks about saying something, but Niall, bless him, grabs Zayn from behind, fitting his fingers in the hollow under Zayn's ribs. Zayn squirms away. "So, Zayn," Niall asks brightly, "what have you been up to these last few days? Painting the town red in your mankini?"

Zayn doesn't even dignify that with an answer, but they all laugh and it relaxes the atmosphere enough for them to have a good time. Louis makes them dubious cocktails out of rum, vodka and a selection of fruits Harry doesn't want to know the provenance of, they watch their fair share of Louis and Harry's bad action movies collection – all in all, it's a regular night in the Styles-Tomlinson household. Zayn even joins in when Niall and Harry start mock-fighting over the last slice of pizza, and it ends on the floor, limbs entangled as they try to come up with the most ridiculous insults.

They all fall asleep in a pile, Niall's elbow jammed in Harry's sternum and Harry's legs slung over Louis's lap. The couch is too small to fit all of them, but when has that ever been stopped them? Zayn is half on the ground, anyway, his head tipped back to rest against Harry's side and his fingers stroking Niall's hair lightly, mechanically. Sometimes Harry wonders what he would do without them, and he can't breathe for a second. They're his brothers. It's more than luck, this. 

It makes for an uncomfortable morning, though, and by the time the sun's streaming through the blinds Louis is groaning that he's never drinking again. 

"Sure you aren't," Harry says agreeably. 

"No, really," Louis moans. He does sound truly miserable, but Harry knows from experience that he'll be the first to be smashed as soon as there's a party. Louis's always been that way, even before meeting them, taking every opportunity like it's his last, like he might die tomorrow. There's something feverish about him: most days it stays on the surface, the volcano bubbling of incredible joy, but sometimes it sinks, it gets sad and desperate. That's when Louis needs him. That's Harry's there, ready with a mug of tea and the story of the last prank Nick's stupid friends dragged him into.

"I need a pint," Niall croaks next to them, rubbing his eyes, and Louis makes a face in distaste. 

"Oh, sod off, all of you," Zayn says, clearly trying to catch a few more minutes' sleep. "Some of us are trying to sleep here."

Of course, it only unleashes the fury of Louis and Niall and Zayn is soon being harassed by the two of them, sitting on his stomach to force him to wake up. He grumbles until it becomes clear he's not going to come back to sleep with the two of them poking at his chest and pulling his hair, and flounces off the bathroom. 

As usual, Harry gets designated the breakfast-maker, and he whips up hasty pancakes with the meagre resources left in the fridge. The boys seem content with it anyway, which they should, because Harry's hungover too and he's not feeling exactly peachy right now. But even Zayn doesn't complain, and they eat their breakfast in near-silence, munching more or less happily, elbows knocking around the small table. 

"What time is the plane?" Niall asks when he's cleared his plate. They'd planned to go to Heathrow and see the lovebirds off way before the wedding; it's rare that any of them goes to the airport on their own, a tradition of sorts.

"Four," Zayn answers. They all startle a little; he doesn't talk much these days, especially about Liam. 

The day passes slowly and they tacitly decide to stay together. Niall and Louis play video games as Zayn alternates between doodling in his notebook and sleeping. He obviously has a lot of sleep to catch up on, what with partying non-stop since the day Liam said he was going to propose. Harry keeps busy, checks Twitter and replies to a few fans, bakes a batch of cupcakes for Liam and Danielle to eat on the plane, because celebrities or not, plane food is fucking horrid. 

When it's time for them to go they all file out of the apartment and into Harry and Louis's cars. Louis takes Niall with him because Niall wants to talk about something (probably the redhead from the other night) and they're all still hesitant about subjecting Zayn to relationship talk. 

The atmosphere in the car is a little stilted. Harry turns on the radio, but he can't help glancing at Zayn periodically.

"Stop that," Zayn snaps after Harry spends the entire duration of the red light staring at him, probably less sneakily than he thought. 

"Sorry," Harry mumbles, and, because he's always been a little suicidal and because Zayn's his friend, he adds: "It's just, I —well, we—"

"I'm _fine_ , Harry," Zayn says. 

"You're obviously not," Harry says. 

Zayn closes his eyes frustratedly. "Look, it's my problem, okay? Just, let me deal with it."

"It's not _your_ problem, you twat. It affects all of us, and you're our friend," Harry says, maybe taking a curve a little more violently than necessary. "We fucking worry about you."

"Well, don't," Zayn snaps. "I can take care of myself." He fiddles with the doorknob like he wants to escape, but he's not desperate enough to jump off a moving car, Harry doesn't think. 

Harry bites down the _obviously you can't_ that's threatening to blurt out of his mouth. He's never been good at restraining himself, but Liam's not here to be the sensible one right now and adding oil to the fire is rarely the smart thing to do. 

He can feel his muscles bundled up on his back when they get to the airport. Harry likes airports even less since he's started spending half his life in them: they're like elevators, places designed to be restless. He can never manage to catch a minute of sleep during a plane ride, which unfailingly makes the six hours minimum to the US fucking uncomfortable.

They spot Danielle and Liam easily enough, two bodyguards hanging around them as casually as two hundred-pound men with bulging muscles can. Paul isn't there even though the bodyguards aren't actually going to the Bahamas with Liam and Danielle; he deserved the time with his family too, especially since he spends half his time bemoaning that his little girl is growing up without him.

Liam's smiling, his arm snug tight around Danielle's waist. They're both looking as happy as they were at the church, dressed for the summer and beaming even harder when they catch sight of their little group. Louis huffs out a little disbelieving laugh. 

"Hey guys," Liam says softly. It's ridiculous how much he loves them; sometimes Harry thinks he should learn to hide it better. 

"Hey," he answers, and pulls Liam into a hug. Liam laughs against the shell of his ear, small and drunk with happiness.

They all hug, and they talk about everything and nothing until Liam and Danielle's plane is called and it's time for them to go. They've done this before, seeing the two of them off to holiday to some exotic location, but this is different. This is a honeymoon, _Liam's_ honeymoon. 

The next time Harry looks at him, Zayn's fingers are twitching slightly, either from nicotine withdrawal already or from emotion. He catches Harry looking and stuffs his hand in his pocket angrily. "Bye, mate," he says to Liam, smiling the best he can. Liam smiles back. Is it even possible he doesn't realize? Harry wonders. Or does he just pretend not to hurt Zayn's feelings? 

They let them leave in a flurry of hugs and blessings, Louis shouting embarrassing things about sex in a jacuzzi after them. Danielle flips him the bird and Liam turns red as a tomato as Louis settles against Harry's side, laughing, unbothered. Harry knows the wedding scared him a little, because this Peter Pan shit might have been blown up by the papers and the fans, Louis's still worried to grow up. Harry threads their fingers together, tries to smile at him as reassuringly as possible, like he isn't scared too. 

They stay there in the middle of the airport until the plane hoists itself from the tarmac and they try to spot it amongst the British Airways planes, watching their big white muzzles go up into the sky. It's kind of intimidating – you never feel how big the plane is when you're in it, but thinking that these things actually _fly_ is always pretty awe-inspiring. 

Harry catches something like despair flash across Zayn's face, stuttering and then fading away. It's stronger than he expected, sharp and aching and he feels the need to draw Zayn close and tell him that he can cry, that they're here for him, that he'll be okay. He doesn't, though. 

They walk back to the cars slowly, Zayn lighting up a smoke as soon as they walk past the sliding doors. They don't really know how to organize themselves when it's not the five of them, and Liam is like the string that holds them all together and keeps them from wandering too far, the silent guard, the anchor. He's still there, of course, a phone call away, his presence lingering in all their memories and clothes and homes, but still. It's not the same. They can't shake the feeling (Harry knows it, he can feel it) that they're losing him. And they _are_ – they're giving him over to the best, most gentle and caring and Liam-appropriate woman in the world, but they're barely twenty-five and this is still a scary thing, a thing that makes them want to call for their mothers. 

Harry thinks about calling Ed and offering to hang out, or maybe Nick if he's not working (though Nick's work schedule is something of a mystery; from all Harry knows he'll be getting into his pajamas when the rest of the world settles down for tea), but he dismisses the idea. He has to talk to Zayn, anyway. Say something, at least, try and make him feel better. That's what mates do, right? 

He lets Louis and Niall climb in Louis's Porsche and tells them that they'll be a minute, not to wait for them. Niall waves them goodbye with the overpriced chocolate donut he bought in the airport.

Zayn throws his cigarette on the asphalt; Harry thinks about it catching fire for a second, the flames rising from nothing. He shakes the thought out, turns towards Zayn. 

"We going?" Zayn asks. He doesn't wait for an answer, starts walking towards the car. 

Harry grabs his arm. "Wait," he says, and regrets not having planned something, some sort of speech. 

Zayn sighs. "I _told_ you," he says forcibly, shaking his arm free, "I don't want to talk about it."

"I do. I don't want you to do something stupid, Zayn."

He knows it's not what they do, at least not what _Zayn_ does, the talk-about-your-feelings thing, but at this point he's kind of scared of Zayn burning his lungs black of catching a STD or something, or plain spoiling himself, wasting all the kind and the careful inside of him that he keeps for the people he loves.

"I just need some time, is all," Zayn says, looking annoyed, _can we drop the subject now?_

"You need to move the fuck on," Harry says, and Zayn winces but someone has to tell him. "Moping isn't gonna help, you know that."

"Fuck you," Zayn snarls. Harry thinks about the felines in the nature documentaries Niall watches sometimes, the way they snarl and hiss when someone pokes at their wounds. 

"You know it's true," Harry says. 

Zayn looks around him like he's searching for an escape or maybe another fag. "Whatever," he says eventually, snapping his fingers against his thigh. 

"Look," Harry says —and seriously, next time it's Louis's turn, because this is fucking excruciating—, "I'm just looking out for you. I know you're hurt," he watches Zayn smirk at the poor formulation, "but there's nothing you can do about it. Plenty of other fish and all that stuff."

"God, shut up," Zayn says, dropping his head into his hands in mock despair. "Okay, I get it, just, shut up. You're embarrassing yourself."

Harry kicks him lightly in the shin, doesn't try to rein in his smile. "Dickhead. See if I ever try to help you again."

"Whatever," Zayn says, but he's smiling back. 

They stand there for a few seconds, rocking back on their heels and smiling at each other awkwardly, bursting with it like teenagers. Zayn's eyes are still sad and kind of weary, unrequited love distilling its poison around his pupils, but what is the saying? Rome wasn't built in a day. Harry isn't going to heal Zayn's broken heart just by insulting him once, convenient as it would be. 

The moment feels a little sacred, and Harry's head is cluttered with ideas and dreams and he doesn't really want to go back to London. He feels like he can do anything; Zayn's smile certainly feels like that. 

He twirls his keys around his fingers nervously, and they give off a small jingle. 

"So... you want to go back to London or something ?" he asks. He wasn't planning on this, but now it seems like the best idea in the world even though it probably isn't, far from it. He just hopes Zayn gets it. Louis would, but it's always different with Louis as it is with everyone else. 

Zayn considers Harry's Audi contemptuously. The sadness leaves his eyes for a second, replaced by a dangerous, exhilarating kind of frown. 

"This is such a bad car for a road trip," he says. 

Harry just laughs. 

*

They pick up insanely overpriced snacks in a shop inside Heathrow, Kit-Kats and the like. It's junk and they're probably going to need something more substantial if they're going to drive for hours, days, who knows, but for now they don't care. Getting out of Heathrow is a fucking nightmare. Harry decides to be positive about it but five minutes in he's ready to drop the whole thing if it means he can go home and forget about these fucking signs ("They're _lying_ , Zayn." "You're reading them wrong, 's'all." "How can I fucking read them _wrong_? They're road signs, for fuck's sake! Aren't they supposed to enlighten you or some shit?" "Bugger off, let me try. …the signs are lying. They're actually _lying_."). 

They manage to make it out in the end, to the cost of their dignity, faith in humanity and a pack of Maltesers Zayn actually throws at another driver, his face contorted with rage while Harry laughs hysterically. They decide to take a break as soon as they catch sight of the highway, because it's already been too long, Harry has cramps in his fingers and they're both ravenous. They end up in a shitty restaurant on the side of the road. It's weird to be like that, Harry thinks as they slide into the chairs, to be face to face.

"Where're we going, then?" Harry asks over his greasy fish and chips. 

Zayn looks up at him sharply. He wipes the corner of his mouth with his napkin. "So we're really doing this?" he asks. His eyes are dark, like he's half afraid and half aroused by the adventure of it. _We're running away?_ Harry reads in the liquid brown of them. 

Harry shrugs like it's not a big deal, even though it is. "Yeah? I mean, I'd rather not have spent an hour trying to get out of this fucking airport to have to go back to London, if it's all the same to you."

Zayn flicks one of his fries at him. "Twat," he says quietly. 

They smile at each other, looking back at their food. They don't talk about calling the boys. They'll have all the time to think about that later, Harry reasons to himself, and tries to shake the feeling that it's a cop-out out of his skin. They talk about everything and nothing over their shitty meal. Harry's probably going to do a solo thing with Ed, so he tells Zayn about that, and in return Zayn tells him about how he's been drawing a lot and he's not as bad at it as he used to be. Over dessert (an acceptable chocolate mousse), Zayn tilts his head. 

"Paris."

"What?" Harry asks around a mouthful of chocolate, showing off his black tongue. 

Zayn scrunches up his nose. "You're disgusting," he says with an amused frown. "We should go to Paris."

Harry smirks. "Really?"

"Why not?" Zayn asks, a little defensively. 

Harry holds his hands up. "I don't know, it just seems a bit... romantic, 's'all."

Zayn shrugs. "That's a cliché," he says dismissively. "I'm sure the people who live there don't find it romantic at all."

Harry frowns; it's interfering with his vision of the place. "I guess," he admits eventually. "Why'd you want to go there?"

Zayn smiles, small at the corner of his mouth. "Always wondered what it would be like." He must sense that Harry's about to retort that he does know what it's like, they've been there, more than once, because he adds, "I mean, for real."

Harry makes a face. "Okay," he says after a while. It's not like he has a better idea. "How long do you want to stay?"

Zayn dismisses his concerns with a vague hand. "We'll figure it out when we're there," he says, shrugging all loose-limbed, sadness suddenly melted out of him. 

"Yeah," Harry agrees. 

It's hot when they get back into the car, the afternoon sun glaring down at them. The car smells of asphalt and heated plastic, and it's not really comfortable but it's still its own thing, like a strange twenty-first century epic, Harry and Zayn Go On A Roadtrip or something, silhouettes of the two of them with their hair in the wind, everything uncomplicated. It's a nice thought; Harry smiles at nothing. 

They agree that they don't want to take the motorway —boring and not a 'proper roadtrip' (or so Zayn says)— so Harry stops at a shop to buy them a map and they take smaller roads instead. The summer dust coats the car a dull gold and there's sweat trickling down their spines. They take their shirts off. Harry sneaks a glance at Zayn's chest because he has a new tattoo there and he doesn't show it off often, an intricate vine climbing from his waist up to his ribs, colours curling around his forearms, blue, yellow, green. 

"Stop checking me out, Styles," Zayn says. 

Harry laughs, flutters his eyelashes. "But you're so _pretty_." 

Zayn shoves him in the side. "Fuck off," he says, but he's smiling. 

After a while Harry decides he's in charge of the music and unearths his stash of CDs. There are dozens of them, all 'dirty hipster stuff' —that's what Louis calls it, anyway. It makes Zayn laughs and he puts on the XX because, he says, they need some fucking energy. Harry tries to bat his hands away while driving, which is only mildly successful. 

He looks out the open window. It's strange, seeing the UK like that, like they're just visitors, strangers passing through, like it's not really their country. It feels like getting a tattoo removed, something you've always had stitched to your skin suddenly part of the outside, like losing something you've always had, a memory or a limb or an old childhood toy. It feels weird, not entirely unpleasant. 

Zayn falls asleep two hours in. Harry doesn't wake him up because he's not an asshole (well, not always) and instead puts Stars on and sings along quietly. The sun is setting and it's dragging the shadow of Zayn's eyelashes over his cheek like strings of cheese. Harry sneaks glances that his stepdad would grouse at him for, say, _watch the road when you're driving_. 

Truth is, he's not really used to wanting to take care of someone. Gemma always took care of herself, and their mother is a big woman, not scared of saying what she thinks and going up against people if she thinks something is unfair. Harry never had much protecting to do – he was always the one being coddled, the little thing with red cheeks and curls, and he's not exactly frail now but he used to be, pasty and wiry and thin and people would wrap him in their arms and tell him that everything would be okay. He remembers – in college he grew up all at once and then when people hugged him his head always stuck up and he watched the horizon, a little disquieted by the new perspective. 

This is different. He's _part_ of this, getting up on stages all over the world to sing for thousands of people and eating Chinese on the floor of a Los Angeles studio with his four best mates. It's his thing – he's built it and he came up with the name, it's his, it's really his. He cares for it like you'd care for a baby; sometimes he wants to cuddle it close and sometimes it exhausts him, but he can't give it up. 

And it's that, too: caring for a boy who's asleep, shadows drawn tight around his eyes and arms wrapped around his body, choked up with unrequited love. It's kissing Louis on the cheek and wanting to give everything, fucking _everything_ to keep this just like it is, in a glass frame with the sun shining down on them and twenty-five and still happy like kings. It's a bit overwhelming, to tell the truth. 

He takes his phone out of his pocket, switches it on. Ten missed calls, fuck. He presses 1 on his speed dial. 

"Hey," Louis answers, voice sleep-rough. Harry tries to picture him, sitting in the kitchen with his cheek on the table, blankets all around him, his eyes puffy with sleep.

"Hey, Lou," Harry says, a bit shy all of a sudden. 

He hears Louis sit up straight suddenly, the chair screeching on the tiles as it's forced away from the table. They've talked about replacing the tiles with hardwood, but they never actually get around to it. Gone too often, or something. Paul says they would if they really wanted, but Louis always says it doesn't make sense because why would they want to keep tiles in their kitchen? Tiles are fucking annoying and ugly and they're only here because they came with the flat and people think putting tiles and a sink in a room makes it a kitchen. Paul just smiled and shook his head, like he knew something they didn't. 

"Fuck, Haz, where are you? Nialler's been freaking out on me all day." He pauses, hesitates. "Zayn with you?"

"Yeah, yeah," Harry says, trying and failing not to feel guilty. It's not leaving without telling Louis, it's leaving without him. He would've loved this. A road-trip. "Look, Zayn and I are going to be, um, away for a few days, yeah? Maybe a week. Not a big deal, just, you know, don't make dinner for two."

He tries to make it light, into a joke, but for once Louis isn't buying it. "You can fuck right off, Harold Styles," he says, and Harry thinks about telling him for the nth time that his name isn't actually Harold but doesn't. "Spit it out right now."

"Look, you know how," he glances at Zayn to ascertain that he's asleep, "Zayner's not at his best, right? I thought it would be good for him to like, see the world. Or something. So we're doing a road-trip, I guess."

Louis sighs. Harry can't tell if he's disappointed or angry or relieved; it's the worst thing. "Where are you going, then?" he asks, and it sounds weary. 

Harry shrugs, forgetting for a moment that Louis can't see him. "Dunno," he says. "France, and then Italy, maybe? I don't think we'll make it out of the country tonight."

Louis chuckles in the receiver, but it sounds weird, unnatural. "You're crazy as shit, Styles," he says, a bit manic. "You're lucky I like you."

"You love me," Harry says. 

Louis's voice is unexpectedly sincere when he answers, "I do."

Harry wants to say things, the kind of things he usually says when it's four a.m. and there's a storm outside and he crawls into Louis's bed, the kind of things that Louis hugs out of him, his fingers settling in the hollows between Harry's ribs, _you're my best friend, I love you so much_. He doesn't. 

"I'll send you postcards," Harry says inanely, to fill the silence, but suddenly he means it, more than anything. "I'll send you postcards," he repeats, more assuredly. "Loads of them."

Louis laughs in the receiver. Harry feels like he's done something right. "You better. I'll be waiting for them every day like a soldier's wife, Harold. Don't fail me."

"I won't," Harry says, more fiercely than he meant to. 

There's a silence, but it's not really awkward, more like they're imagining being together to compensate for the lack of actual physical presence. It's not really a success. Harry wonders briefly why he left, if it was worth-it, but he glances at Zayn, skinny and curled up on himself in the passenger seat, and it is. 

"You want me to give you Nialler?" Louis asks eventually, startling Harry out of his daze. 

"Yeah, sure," he says. "Bye, Lou. Love you." 

"Love you," Louis answers, like he always does. 

He puts Niall on. They talk for a while; Niall yells at him for about twenty seconds before he gets bored with it and starts listing things he thinks they should do instead. 

"You should definitely go to Disneyland, mate," he says. He sounds like he's got his mouth full of something. Harry glances down at his watch: four, he probably does. "Me mum always said she'd bring me there when I was a kid." There's a pause. Niall shouts to Louis to turn down the TV. "Sorry, mate. Anyway, maybe she brought me when I was, like, four, but I don't remember anyway. But she says it's massive and there's like, Mickey mouse and stuff. Bit like Times Square, I reckon," he says, sounding sort of pensive. 

Harry remembers Times Square, though it's more of a jumbled feeling than a picture-like memory, sounds and colours and lights and people. He's not sure he wants to renew the experience. 

"Yeah, okay, I'll submit the idea to Zayn," Harry says. 

He must sound doubtful, because Niall laughs, says, "Come on, I know you're only going to do hipster stuff like hanging out in libraries and going to underground shows or summat, but go there for me, yeah? And bring me something back." He thinks for a few seconds. "Like a stuffed Donald Duck or something, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay," Harry laughs. 

"Gotta go, mate. Give us a ring when you're wherever you're going, yeah?" Niall asks. 

"Sure, definitely."

He feels a little empty when Niall hangs up and the long beeps start to resonate in his ear, but in the end he hangs up too. He's lucky Zayn is still asleep – he wouldn't have liked him talking on the phone while driving. He's annoyingly particular about driving in general. 

He drives for a good twenty minutes more, burrowing deeper in the southern countryside – he's not driving straight to Dover, that would be so _boring_ – before Zayn wakes up. He cracks an eye open and mumbles something. 

"Sorry, what was that?"

"Time is it?" Zayn mumbles, opening his second eye blearily. He stretches as much as he can in the space he has, his body unfurling like a cat's.

"Four thirty," Harry says. 

Zayn yawns loudly, then shivers. He settles back in his seat, pulling his T-shirt out from under his ass and putting it back on. 

"Niall says to bring back chocolate if we go to Switzerland," Harry announces. 

Zayn lets out a short bark of laugh. "Figures, the hungry twat. M'sure he wants us to bring him back _baguette_ , too."

"Didn't specify," Harry says. "So anyway, I figured we don't want to take the Chunnel tonight, and Dover is a fucking boring city, so we're going to Brighton, right?"

"Okay," Zayn says, instead of the _that doesn't make any sense_ Harry was expecting, like he's too tired to do anything else than trust Harry, rely blindly on him.

"You ever been there?" Harry asks.

Zayn shrugs. "I don't think so, but my mum has family literally everywhere in the bloody country, so I reckon I've probably been there on some family occasions. You want me to do co-pilot?"

"Sure," Harry says. "We're near Crawley, I think, but I've tried to avoid the big roads, so."

Zayn pulls the map out of the glove compartment and spends a few minutes bent over it. He even puts his glasses on, even though they make him look more hipster than serious and he barely even needs them. He says it keeps his hair out of his eyes, but it's complete bullshit, he just thinks he looks good in them. Harry doesn't mind too much, though – he rather likes the glasses, the way they sit on Zayn's cheekbones all oversized and square. It's nice. 

"So we're, like, a little bit closer than you thought, I think?" Zayn eventually says. "I mean, to Brighton. We should be there by six or something."

"Sounds good," Harry says. He frowns. "How'd you get so good at map-reading, anyway?" he asks. 

"Told you, my mom has family everywhere. She used to drive us and make me read the map when I got bored. T'was nice," he says, settling deeper into his seat. 

Harry smiles a little. It's weird: they're such good friends, all of them – they've even met each other's parents and siblings and all that stuff, but it's like they skipped all the preliminaries of friendship. Harry knows how Louis likes his pancakes and that he only ever wants to be the big spoon, even though he is the smallest of all of them by far, but he doesn't know what his middle name is, or what sports he used to play when he was a kid. It's like they're doing it all in reverse: first threading the rug of friendship with the coarse threads, the serious things and the intimate things and all the 'forever and always' fringes – and only then adding all the subtle colors, yellow for family memories and anise green for details about themselves and so on. 

"What about you?" Zayn asks, twisting in his seat to look at Harry. He's got his knees drawn to his chest and he looks sort of small, his chin on top of his bony knees. It's probably uncomfortable – the belt must be digging into his stomach and this position is never comfortable anyway. "Ever been there?"

"Once, but it was for, like, a week and I don't remember it at all," Harry answers. "It'll be fun," he adds. 

"Yeah," Zayn says. 

They don't talk a lot more after that. Harry's collection of CDs is pretty much endless, and the landscape is kind of fascinating, not because it's actually _interesting_ —mainly so far it's been fields upon fields of alternating yellow and green and burst of grey suburbs, rows of identical cottages— but because it feels like discovering the garden shed in your backyard, something that you never really bothered to look at even though you knew it was there. Zayn was right, the Audi isn't the best car for a road-trip, the leather sticking to their exposed skin and too-low ceiling – but still, it's nice. Cozy, sort of. 

Harry keeps taking the little roads because he can, and they watch the tiny villages nestled in the valleys with their identical churches and glowing windows as the sun starts reddening, the limestone and chalk downland running in the horizon, the flatlands and the fields stretching endless and green. It's breathtaking sometimes, boring some others. It's new. 

It's a little after six when they get to Brighton. 

"I'm sore in places I didn't even know _existed_ ," Harry complains as they enter the city. Suddenly seeing other cars, streets bustling with activities and people, after having driven silently for so long, is jarring. 

They find a hotel called The Griffin near the town centre. It's nice, kind of quaint with big rooms and a lot of wood panelling. The lady at the reception desk tells them that they only have doubles, and when Harry tells her it's fine she watches them from the corner of her eye like she can't decide whether to find them cute or disgusting. She obviously recognizes them, though she doesn't say anything about it, and Harry makes sure to slip an extra bill on the counter so that the first thing they see when they go out tomorrow won't be 'Shocking News: Harry Styles and Zayn Malik of One Direction Go Gay for Each Other' or something equally as ridiculous. 

Zayn stands away from the desk during the proceedings, his messenger bag slung over his shoulder and his beanie low on his head as though that was going to keep people from recognizing him. He follows Harry obediently to the elevators and then to the room, makes a surprised sound when he notices it's a double.

"Sorry," Harry shrugs, "they only had that and I didn't want to take the car again. I swear if I drive one more mile my ass is gonna merge with the seat or something." 

Zayn chuckles, "Yeah, okay," and goes to collapse on the bed, barely taking the time to slide his sunglasses off. 

Besides, Harry thinks, continuing on a train of thought he didn't he was following, Zayn probably needs the human warmth after all this shit with Liam, and if there's something they do well in this band, it's cuddling. Especially sneaky cuddling. 

The room is really nice, a blend of traditional and modern with a spacious, sturdy wooden bed, headboard against a red brick wall, plush leather armchairs standing before windows from where the evening light floods in. The ceiling is roof-shaped, supported by wooden beams like in a fairytale. Zayn only looks up from where his face is buried in the white pillows to complain that "sleeping in a hotel is cheating. We should be sleeping in a motel or something, otherwise it's not a _proper_ roadtrip. It should all dirty with dubious patrons and greasy food and stuff," he mumbles. 

"We're not in _Thelma and Louise_ ," Harry says. 

"I'd be Louise," Zayn says immediately. 

"What? No way. You'd totally be Thelma," Harry retorts.

They bicker about it for a few minutes until they settle on Zayn being Thelma when Harry phrases it as "the crazy housewife to my liberated woman." 

"I guess I could go with that," Zayn mumbles, chuckling softly into the pillow he's appropriated. 

Harry settles in one of the tiny armchairs. It's surprisingly comfortable, and the sun pours on his neck and shoulder, warm and welcoming. It feels like a surprise massage, working the driving knots out of his muscles. 

He hums in pleasure. "How come you're so particular about roadtrips, anyway?"

Zayn shrugs awkwardly, shoulders barely lifting. "I dunno, I used to have this fantasy when I was a kid that I'd like, travel through America, when I... found someone or whatever," he says. 

"Oh," Harry says. He doesn't really know what to answer to that, so he says: "Sorry to disappoint, then."

He meant it as a joke, sort of, but Zayn looks up, hauls himself on his elbows. He considers Harry for a few seconds, his eyes soft and kind of dark. "Nah, you're okay," he says after a while, his gaze steady, a tangible weight on Harry's right cheekbone. "You'll do."

Harry's breath actually catches in his throat for a second, which is stupid since it's _Zayn_ and it's not like that, but still. The air in the room is hot and warm and fucking _comfortable_ and this is all unfamiliar and familiar at the same time, and it's friendship unfurling down on him like a fucking tsunami, Harry wanting to stand up and hug the sadness out of Zayn, crush it out his bones. 

Eventually Harry's the one to break the silence, coughs low in his throat even though he doesn't need to. Zayn looks like it's woken him up, his eyelids lifting fully. "So anyway," Harry says, "you want to go get dinner or something?"

"Sure," Zayn says. He yawns. "Later, though?"

"Yeah, okay. It must not be open yet, anyway," Harry says, glancing down at his watch, "it's only six thirty. Sleep?"

"Yeah," Zayn says, flopping back down on the pillows. "Nap time."

"You should strip, though, mate," Harry says. "You're gonna be fucking uncomfortable like that."

Zayn smirks lazily, his eyes full of honeyed warmth. "You wanna get me naked so soon, Styles? I'm not that kind of girl," he says, and grins when Harry flips him off. 

He does it, though, strips down to his underwear and sighs softly as he slips between the crisp white sheets, his eyes already closing. "What're you gonna do?" he mumbles sleepily, cracking half an eye open. 

Harry gestures to the open bathroom facing the bed. "Just take a shower to wash off the road dirt, then I'm joining you," he assures. 

"Hm," Zayn says, burrowing deeper in the bed. "S'ya later."

Harry nods, his eyes soft. "Sure."

Zayn falls asleep almost immediately. It's strange that he's more tired than Harry even though Harry did all the driving, Harry thinks, but then if Zayn could spend half the year sleeping like some kind of hibernating animal he probably would, so it's not all that surprising. 

The shower isn't in a separate room – it's right there in front of the bed, all soft blue tile and comfortable-looking bathtub. Harry's almost tempted to take a bath, but he's dead tired too and they still have to drive at least tomorrow and then probably for a few days after that. The shower feels insanely good, the warm water sluicing on his skin and taking with it some of the exhaustion along with the sweat and grime. It's still kind of weird to be standing there stark naked, but they're mates – they've seen each other naked loads of times, and it's not like Harry's not comfortable with his body, anyway. Besides, Zayn's sleeping. 

For some reason he doesn't really remember, Harry's still got one of Louis's T-shirts in his bag. It's actually originally his, a loose grey thing with a fading Radiohead logo on the front, but Louis declared it his when they got the flat and never gave it back. It smells like him, Harry realizes when he puts it on, and it grounds him, washes the nasty homesickness from his stomach. He slips into bed next to Zayn, the linen brushing his skin pleasantly. The exhaustion catches up with him as soon as his head touches the pillow, and he falls asleep almost immediately. 

The sky is darker when he wakes up. He's is the first to get out of the bed – he's surprised Zayn even woke up at all. It's eight when he checks his watch, later than he'd expected to sleep, and if they don't get a move on now they won't find anywhere that'll cook them something to eat. 

"You hungry?" he asks, even though he knows Zayn probably is – they haven't eaten since that hasty lunch in the restaurant near Heathrow and a handful of melted Kit-Kat bars that Niall forgot in the car a few days ago.

"Ravenous," Zayn mumbles. 

"Get your arse out of bed, then," Harry says, and starts getting dressed. They'll need to buy clothes sometime tomorrow, too – the thing with this roadtrip being a spontanenous thing is, well, they haven't got anything, not even a toothbrush. At least they're both used to carrying their passports wherever they go, so that's one thing.

"Can I take a shower?" Zayn asks as he attempts to disentangle himself from the sheets. Harry bites down a smile. 

"Make it quick," he says. They really do need to go soon – Harry hopes they'll find a restaurant near the hotel, otherwise they'll probably have to buy junk food or something from those 24/7 supermarkets, and there aren't any appliances in the room. It's summer, though, it probably doesn't matter if they eat cold, but it'd be nicer to have somewhere to sit back and relax. Relaxing is what this whole thing's about, after all. 

Harry startles a little when Zayn starts dropping clothes right in the middle of the room, surprised even though he shouldn't be – neither of them is particularly shy about their bodies, and it's not like they have anything to be shy about, really. It's just sort of strange to see Zayn, who used to be so mousy and secretive during those first few weeks together, drop his pants so unconcernedly, his nimble fingers taking off all his jewelry without looking, easy like that habit Harry has of shaking his hair into place. Still, he tries not to look as Zayn showers, but the bathroom really is facing the bed and though the room comfortable, it isn't really big. He sneaks a few glances from the corner of his eye; Zayn's attractive, always has been, especially like this, with his hair pushed back by the spray, tattoos stark on the dark skin of his arms.

The receptionist smiles at them when they cross the hall, and Harry thinks that he could probably fuck her, if he wanted. The idea lost some of its appeal a few years ago, though, when the number of girls he can think that of increased dramatically. Harry likes a challenge – it's always been one of his characteristics. Management would probably call it a liability, and he knows Caroline would call it a quality. He smiles back, just to be polite, and Zayn slips him an oblique glance. Harry wonders how to tell him that he won't sleep with her, that he knows it's not good roadtrip etiquette, without saying it out loud. 

"What're you in the mood for?" he asks instead. When in doubt, talk about food; that could probably be Niall's motto. ("Even when you're not in doubt," he would probably crow, and for a second Harry sees him really clearly, his sunny smiles and patient laughing eyes.)

Zayn shrugs. "Anything, really," he says, affably trusting. 

They find a restaurant not too far from the hotel. They've bypassed the Griffin Inn to make as if they're travellers, though they'll probably go there in the morning – Liam may be one of those "demented people who take a stroll at the crack of dawn", as Louis puts in, but Zayn and Harry most certainly aren't. Mostly Harry used to pretend to go to the gym for the sake of the media, and Zayn doesn't even try. 

The restaurant is called Sawadee. It's Thai and the frontage is welcoming, lots of plants and soft amber light that melts into the night. From the outside it looks like the building is smiling. When they sit down they're given the traditional menu with numbers and tiny photos in the corners, and it makes Harry realize how hungry he is, all of a sudden. He laughs when he hears Zayn's stomach growl in response.

They order and they eat quickly. They're both tired, even though they just woke up not even an hour ago – they probably shouldn't have slept in the afternoon. The wine numbs them further, but it's not very good, so they don't drink that much. They don't talk a lot either, apart from a few off-handed comments about what they'd like to see while they're in Paris, and Zayn insists that he wants to climb the Eiffel Tower even though Harry protests that it's the penultimate tourist trap. 

Harry thinks about saying something about Liam, offering an opening for Zayn to talk, but he doesn't know how to start the conversation. _So, you know how you're in love with one of our best mates?_ is probably a little awkward. He'll touch on that later on their trip – it's cliché and cheesy, but Harry feels like they haven't driven enough yet, like it might get easier with each new mile. 

He sneaks a glance at Zayn, wonders what he's thinking about. He can't really tell, because Zayn's eyes are perpetually dark and he always seems a little pensive, even when he's planning pranks with Louis. He has really long eyelashes, Harry thinks – everyone always says it, but it's the first or second time he notices it for himself. They're really long, like a girl's; it's weird, pretty. 

"Louis said to send him postcards," Harry says. 

Zayn laughs. "I bet he did." He looks at Harry, something hesitant in his eyes. "You gonna do it, right?"

"Yeah, of course. Wouldn't want the wankers to feel alone without us."

"You wish," Zayn says, wiping his sauce-shiny mouth with a napkin. "Louis'll probably have taken over the apartment when we come home, and you won't be able to get anything back."

Harry laughs. They go back to eating, and there's a beat of silence, another, before—

"Are you supposed to know you're going back when you go on a roadtrip?" Harry asks. He didn't really mean to ask, but Zayn is the expert in road trips, after all. 

"I guess not," Zayn says, looking a bit taken aback, and Harry can see him reviewing all the films and books and fantasies about roadtrips in his head. "Why're you asking me that?"

Harry shrugs. "I dunno. Guess it sounds weird, knowing that we are. Aren't road trips supposed to be, like, taking the road with a backpack and your dreams and discovering yourself on the way or summat?"

Zayn's eyes cloud over. He takes a sip of wine before answering, "I guess so, yeah."

They spent the rest of the dinner in silence, Harry still mulling over the thought; he wonders if he could take the car and never get back to London, back to Louis and the boys and to being One Direction, wonders if he could and if he'd want to. Probably not. 

When they're finished they go back to the hotel in the dark, the street lamps oozing their fuzzy yellow auras in the street. It's not late, not really, but they feel the weight of houses on their shoulders, exhaustion taking over. Harry remembers leaving Liam and Danielle's flat the night of their wedding, waving goodbye while they giggled and kissed, Zayn silent at the door, and it seems like years ago, like this moment doesn't even belong in the same universe. 

"D'you want to do something?" Harry asks, a bit pointlessly, before yawning. 

Zayn shoots him a pointed look. "I want to _sleep_ , mate. Preferably for forty hours straight."

Harry nods. "Yeah," he says, and then: "We're not going to go very far, at this rate."

"Slow and steady wins the race, yadda yadda," Zayn says. 

Harry could probably say, _yeah, I never really believed that; I love things that burn, spitfire and moving sands, gone as quickly as they appeared, and that's what makes them beautiful and immortal – unless you're talking about another race?_ He doesn't. He's too tired to start an argument, anyway, much less one like that. 

They brush their teeth together, hips knocking as their eyelids droop in the vast mirror. There's nothing Harry loves more about them – the five of them – than the comfortable familiarity that they settled so quickly into. He would miss their bodies if they weren't so readily available, shoulders to lay his head on and hands to pinch him and prod him and caress his forehead, knuckles to brush against his arm when he's full of doubt and flanks to press against for warmth. 

They spit their white foam in the sink and prepare for bed lazily, limbs uncoordinated as the exhaustion gains them more and more. When they slip into the sheets they arrange themselves against each other almost naturally. It's not unusual but it isn't really routine either – it would probably be Louis and Liam instead, but it doesn't mean that they don't fit well together. They just have to shuffle a little bit more to find a comfortable position, Harry's arm loosely resting on Zayn's waist, curving so that his palm rests on the warm mattress underneath Zayn's ribs where they hold his heart. He doesn't plaster himself to Zayn's back, because Zayn doesn't like feeling smothered, but they're touching. It's enough. It's reassurance. 

"G'night," Harry says. 

Zayn hums. 

He falls asleep before Harry; Harry watches him in the haze of half-sleep, the alternation of soft and sharp on his body and his traits, and searches in vain for the traces of a broken heart. He falls asleep with a half-formed question on his lips, that he won't remember when he wakes up.

*

Harry wakes up with the sun. It's nine, not really early but not really late either, and he feels good, rested, ready to take up the adventure. Zayn is still passed out on the sheets, drooling quietly on the pillow, and Harry doesn't have the heart to wake him up right now. He washes his teeth and takes a quick shower as quietly as he can before he shakes Zayn's shoulder because he's fucking hungry and, as much as he loves Zayn, it's certainly not as much as he loves pancakes. 

"Wake up, lazyass," he says. He's being gentle – Louis would probably have dropped a glass of water on his face or something by now. (No, actually —he would probably have found that unimaginative and dreamed up a new refined and horrible torture to get Zayn to wake up.)

"G'way," Zayn mumbles. It's pretty adorable, especially coming from a grown man with stubble and tattoos. 

"D'you want me to get breakfast without you? Because I will. And then I will take _my_ car and go to Paris on my own," Harry threatens, smiling, though the smiling part probably negates the threat in his words. 

Zayn cracks half an eye open to glare at him. 

"You should get that looked up, though, mate," Harry says cheerily. "I'm pretty sure it's not normal for someone to sleep that much."

"Fuck off," Zayn grumbles, slowly getting out of bed. 

"Chop chop!" Harry encourages, and laughs when Zayn attempts to slap him for it. 

In the end, Harry pesters Zayn into showering as quickly possible, and his hair is barely even dry by the time they make it out the door. They take their bags with them; just because they're celebrities and they can afford it doesn't mean that they like paying for one day more. Harry drives them to the Griffin Inn, which is really only about ten feet away, and parks the car, and they try to decide what they want to do as they eat. 

"Stop talking with your mouth full, Styles," Zayn says with affected disdain. "It's fucking disgusting."

"What'er," Harry mumbles. "We 'ave to 'isit 'righ'on," he says around a mouthful of pancakes. 

Zayn only arches an eyebrow at him. Harry swallows, grinning. 

"We should visit Brighton," he repeats, taking a sip of squeezed orange juice. "Man, nothing tops squeezed orange juice. Nothing."

Zayn opens his mouth to retort but Harry holds up a silencing finger. "Shh", he says. 

Zayn tries again, but Harry only repeats the motion. "Shh," he says, his eyebrows drawing together ridiculously. 

Zayn sighs pointedly. "You moron," he says. "I was just going to say that there's fuck-all to see in Brighton. I don't see why we have to stay there for a whole day. We've not even left the country yet! As far as road trips go, I have to tell you, this is fucking terrible."

"It's your country, Malik. We're exploring its wonders."

"You sound like Louis," Zayn says, smiling in his cup of tea.

There's a moment of silence. Harry munches on his croissant pensively. 

"D'you think we should call them?" Harry asks. 

Zayn shrugs. 

Harry frowns. "Was that a yes-of-course-shrug or a I-don't-want-to-talk-to-my-best-friends shrug?"

Zayn glares. "Which one do you think, jackass?"

Harry smiles. He hands Zayn his phone and lets him dial the number – he's the one who called last time, even though Zayn wasn't conscious when he did, so he figures it should be his turn now. Sometimes Harry thinks like that: in symmetrical lines and precise numbers, like the menus in Thai restaurants and the streets in New York. 

Harry hears Louis's voice booming out of the phone almost immediately, tinny but still powerful. "So, Malik, how have you been since you've whisked our dear Harold away to mope in hipster locations?"

Zayn frowns, a tiny smile peeking at the corner of his lips. "He's the one who did the whisking, not me," he protests half-heartedly. 

They banter for a few minutes and Harry watches the subtle changes in Zayn's expression as he answers Louis's taunts and his ridiculous questions. He wonders if Liam doesn't watch as closely – if he had, he would've noticed that Zayn was in love with him a long time ago, maybe even before Zayn noticed it himself —sometimes it's this band it's hard to tell love from love. Maybe he did. Maybe he watched and he just chose not to say anything. It sounds like a Liam thing to do. 

Eventually Zayn hands the phone over to Harry, looking fond and exasperated. Harry is surprised when he hears Niall's voice at the other end of the receiver. 

"You taking care of him, yeah?" he asks, low enough that Zayn can't hear. 

"Hello to you too, wanker. Yes, I'm fine, had a good needed night of sleep."

Niall laughs a little. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Are you?"

"Don't worry, Nialler, I've got it under control. By the time we come back he's gonna be in mint condition."

Zayn glares at him over his stack of pancakes, but Harry can feel the genuinely angry _I don't need to be taken care of_ underneath the fake irritation. He tries to look as soothing as possible. Sometimes diplomacy in this band is fucking impossible. 

"Good, then", Niall is saying at the other end of the receiver. "Can't promise the same thing for Lou over there, though," he says. "He's been bloody insufferable since you left."

"You said we'd stay together forever, Harold," Louis bellows from somewhere in the background. Harry chuckles. 

"See what I mean," Niall sighs. 

"I miss you lads," Harry blurts out. It makes Zayn look up from his breakfast. It's not what he'd wanted to say but it's true, so Harry doesn't take it back. 

"Yeah," Niall says, softer. "We miss you too, wankers."

Harry wonders if he could ask now, ask them if they understand why he did that, took Zayn and left the two of them behind, but breakfast probably isn't the appropriate time for that kind of serious discussion. 

"Anyway," he says, because it's getting a little embarrassing and he doesn't really want to get emotional right now, "we have to go now. Call you soon."

"Yeah, do that," Niall says, already sounding distracted by something else. Louis shouts a 'have a good day!' in the background, and Harry mumbles something that's probably inaudible back. 

Zayn is watching him when he hangs up. Harry needs to ask him to do something about his eyes; it's really unsettling how he can never read them. He can tell if Louis is hungry just by the colour and dilatation of his pupils. Zayn's eyes didn't used to be this dark, anyway. Is it because he's sad or something?

"So, d'you want to do something in particular?" he asks, to distract himself from his questions. 

Zayn blinks. "There's a pier, right?"

"I think so, yeah."

They pay for their breakfast and decide to go in search of the pier. They take the occasion to buy a few clothes and a toothbrush each, because there's not having a lot of luggage and then there's not having _anything_. It turns out there _is_ a pier in Brighton, or so the passer-by they ask, a middle-aged lady in a flower-print dress, tells them – apparently they can reach it either by the beach or by the street. They decide on the beach. They're still kids, after all, and they're on a vacation. 

It's summer so the beach is nice, it not a little crowded. They take their shoes off and roll their trousers up, laughing like real tourists, with open mouths and shiny teeth. Zayn buys big garish sunglasses and Harry snorts at him, puts on his Wayfarers and lets Zayn mocks him. The pebbles warm the sole of their feet as they walk, watching the people lying in the beach, a tiny sample of humanity, colourful and loud. Interjections fly around them in at least five different languages. It's sort of humbling, in a weird way. 

Some people recognize them, running up to them and asking for autographs and pictures, but their fans are marginally less aggressive than they used to be at the beginning of their career. It's still crazy, of course, and frankly overwhelming most of the time, but today it's okay, they pose for grainy phone pictures with their arm around each other until the small crowd disperses. They chat about all and nothing as they walk the rest of the way to the pier. Eventually Harry glances up and sees it, standing in the horizon, straight on the blue blue sea. 

"Do you like the sea?" he asks Zayn. He's always thought there was something fascinating about it, the way it can stretch and swallow miles and miles and still look like that, like a lazy blue woman with languid eyelids lying there calmly, effortlessly generous. 

Zayn shrugs. "Not really. Don't trust it, y'know. Since I don't know how to swim."

"You could learn."

"Never really saw the point. I nearly drowned once."

"What?"

"Yeah, when I was a kid... someone pushed me in the pool, had forgotten I couldn't swim. The lifeguard pulled me out but still, it wasn't a great experience."

"I'll bet," Harry half-laughs, a little shocked. 

"It's nice to look at anyway," Zayn offers, as though he feels he should, to make up for the fact that he's afraid.

"Yeah, it is."

Zayn adds, a propos of nothing, "And Michael Phelps is a mental swimmer."

"I wonder if he ever stops swimming, that guy is insane. Can you imagine?"

"You'd think he'd feel satisfied with twenty medals," Zayn remarks. 

The pier is a strange place, garish and touristy with lots of blinking lights and attractions. The cloying smell of sugar oozes from the stacks around them, surrounding them until they give in and buy cotton candy for two. They play with the cardboard silhouettes and their unnatural smiles, dawdle at the rock, cock and winkle stalls, gawk when they get to the helter-skelter that looks like something right out of a Tim Burton movie. 

There are number of fortune-tellers on the way to the pier and Harry looks at them covertly, trying to guess what their faces look like under the make-up and rickety jewellery. They're probably the people he sees in the street in the morning, he thinks, who look bored with life when they go buy their bread. He tries not to pity them, instead focuses on the hypnotic shuffle of cards in their bejewelled hands and the dingle of their ratty chains and metal necklaces. 

When they're all five of them, they love going to the most touristic places. It's what they've done since the beginning, since they've known each other, and it's become kind of a tradition. Besides, back when they used to have mobs of screaming teenagers followed them everywhere, crowded places were the ones where they were the most inconspicuous if their disguises were decent. As a rule, they're more interested in being together than in visiting landmarks, especially when they're on tour – and those places are good, busy and hot and kind of strangely sweet. 

But Harry still prefers other places, the places Nick used to take him to when he had a day off. When he's alone he goes to obscure clubs to listen to non-signed musicians play, and he knows that the others do their own stuff too, but sometimes it feels like he's the only one whose individual life is so removed from their everyday routine. It's not a problem – it doesn't bother anyone. Still, it feels weird to be here with Zayn. 

It's worth-it, though – Zayn obviously likes it, he's smiling, remarking on things as they pass them. He has a good eye for details, the faces and smells and the stray word they hear out of a conversation that isn't theirs. It makes it even more interesting to walk with him: it's as if he were collecting those private things to compile in a herbarium, filling an imaginary notebook with precise little scrawls. Harry looks at him from the corner of his eye, feeling like another kind of collector, cataloguing every shift in Zayn's expression. 

At some point Zayn points at their feet and says, "Look, we can see the sea through the floor."

Harry glances down and it's true, the bridge is old and probably badly maintained and there are slivers of blue-green sea glaring at them, glittering faintly in the low light of the cloudy afternoon. 

"Yeah," he says. "You afraid?"

Zayn looks at him, surprised. "Why would I be?"

Harry shrugs. "I dunno, you said you don't like the sea, I just thought -"

"No, man, I don't like it, like – I don't like to be _in_ it. I love to look at it," Zayn says. He looks like there's more to this, maybe it's like other things, other things he likes to look at and can't touch and wish he could, but Harry doesn't push. _Don't spook him_ , he tells himself. They have plenty of time to talk about this.

"We're so small," Zayn says, still looking through the cracks in the wood, and suddenly he kneels there, in the middle of the promenade, palms flat on his knees, "compared to it."

Harry doesn't say anything. It's not his moment. 

It's different, being there with Zayn; friendship with any of them out of the secure comfort of the unit the five of them form is something else, an experience in itself. With Louis around, Zayn is physical and loud; he hugs Niall and tries to keep Liam at arm's length while simultaneously trying to get as much of him as he can. There's this thing in the band where they're constantly in an in-between space, between knowing each other through and through, on the deepest, most personal level, and constantly discovering shiny new secrets about each other. 

When they get back out the pier, pictures safe in the warm black belly of Harry's camera (the boys made fun of him for a week after he posted it as his Twitter profile picture that one time), Zayn turns on his heel to look at the shiny sign that says Brighton Pier in big, shiny curving letters. It's a strange blend between a horror movie and an old fair, scary in a comfortable way with its gypsies and its swarms of tourists. 

They take the street to come back towards the city centre. They stop at one of the shops to buy postcards for the boys and delight in choosing the ugliest ones; Zayn hooks his chin on the hollow of Harry's shoulder and fits his hand around his waist and it's good, the warmth of him blending with the hot air that brushes against Harry's skin. It still feels natural, like Harry was afraid it wouldn't once they were just the two of them, out of the reassuring cocoon of their extended family. 

They walk along the street and they chat about back home, the upcoming tour and the places they'll go to, the twenty brands of cereal Liam always insist they have in the bus and if Niall will finally find a girlfriend that isn't a complete bitch. When Zayn stops stiffly in the middle of the road, looking right ahead, Harry continues walking for a few steps before noticing and turns back surprised; is it something he said? But Zayn is looking past him, at one of the buildings that front the promenade, where a big gay flag is hanging almost threateningly. 

Harry walks back, curls a hand around Zayn's bicep. "Let's go," he says. 

He'd like to open Zayn's skull and see what's happening, what wheels are turning, what threads are unraveling. He'd like to know if he's in pain or jealous or offended, what this multicoloured flag floating above them like some kind of fabric pachyderm tells him, if it frightens or intimidates or threatens him or fills him with longing. He's not going to ask, though; not now. 

"Let's go," he repeats. Zayn shoots him an irritated glance.

"I can take care of myself, Harry," he says, and it's almost venomous. Harry tries not to let it sting. "I'm not made of glass."

"I'm just trying to protect you," Harry says, and Zayn looks him right in the eye for a second, as though trying to decide wether he's going to start an argument or not, but in the end he justs says, "Whatever. Let's go."

Later. There's still time – there's still time. 

They decide on leaving the town around five; there'll be less people on the roads, they can pull an all-nighter or take turns to sleep. There's something romantic about the idea of taking the tunnel at night, too, the train churning in the sleeping belly of the dark sea or something like that. They think the same way about those kinds of things. They end up finding a bar called _Sticky Mike's Frog Bar_. It's an arty, hipster kind of place, and though it's probably considerably more alive when the sun sets, Harry feels in his element as soon as he sits down. They're his people, the people in here. He knows them – they're the same in Paris and London and Amsterdam, with their messy hair and joints and lazy red smiles that they ink on the rim of their glasses. Zayn's more ambiguous, never really wanted to attach himself to any particular crowd, but he relaxes in his chair all the same. 

No one really cares about who they are here, either, or if they do they don't show it. It means no screaming fangirls but it also means no disdainful looks, heinous because it's good taste to hate Justin Bieber and One Direction these days, shows that you care about the state 'real music''s in. It's all bullshit, really – Harry's pretty sure Zayn agrees on that one. 

Not long after they order – tea for Zayn and a coke for Harry, it's too early for alcohol and they're going to drive, anyway –, a couple clatters down at the table next to them, two men holding hands over the table. They make a pretty pair, very accessorized with overstyled hair and thin, sharp bodies, probably barely over their twenties. Harry used to be good at guessing those things, but between twenty and thirty you can never really tell, you're a twenty-something, something vague with blurry dreams and fading ideals, still faintly drunk on cheap cocktails but quickly realizing that the world's not exactly your oyster. It's a complicated decade. 

Zayn stiffens opposite him as soon as he sees them, his hands going rigid around his cup of tea. The couple shouldn't notice but they do, and one of them throws him an hostile glance, mutters, "Jealous, mate?" as he tries to draw his partner into a kiss. Harry wonders how much Zayn wants to say yes, how close he is to actually saying it, out loud in a hipster coffee shop in Brighton, how devastating an admission like that would be for him.

But the other one blows him off with an irritated, "Stop it, Tom." Harry turns around to look at them, since they're not looking at him – the one who's not Tom has clear grey-blue eyes and a soft pink mouth, probably attractive if that were what Harry was thinking about right now.

"Don't mind him," he says to Zayn, "he's a dick." He hesitates, then holds out a hand. "I'm Jefferson."

Zayn half-smiles. "Zayn."

Jefferson cocks his head and smiles, like _I knew that but I'm not going to mention it_. Zayn looks relieved, kind of grateful. 

"Sorry for -" Zayn gestures at the couple's linked hands. "I didn't mean to seem offensive. It's just – I don't know. Not used to it, I guess," he says awkwardly. 

Tom grudgingly accepts the apology, though now he looks like he wants to know the whole story. They're really adorable, from up close – there's something in the way they move, completely aware of each other even when they aren't touching, that's moving and makes Harry ache for what they have, for a brief second. Then he reasons with himself: what he has is good, too. Different. 

They push their tables close and make more complete introductions. Harry is included in the conversation, and he blends in serenely, like he always does with strangers. His mother used to tell him that he'd go everywhere with his dimples and easy charm. She was probably right – well, she's right most of the time, so why not about that? 

It turns out Jefferson and Tom have recently moved to Brighton from London ("The noise," Tom says. "Plus the Olympics, I don't want to be there when that shit happens." Harry nods in sympathy. He really hopes they'll be on tour when that happens, and he has chauffeurs.) They've been together for six years, probably older than Harry thought; Tom is a physics teachers at one of the Brighton high schools and Jefferson works at a publishing house. Harry sees it, shining on the glassy surface of Zayn's eyes – dream life, everything I ever wanted... He wants to pull him close and tell him that no life is ever easy, not even Tom and Jefferson from Brighton's.

They're nice anyway – they give them advice about what to see in Paris because they've been there for their honeymoon and they make dirty jokes and they're easy-going, intelligent and funny. Harry knows what he likes about these kinds of places, and the first thing is people like that, who recline in their chairs and tell stories with linked hands. _Stop wanting_ , he wants to tell Zayn, as though he's in a position to give advice. _Watch instead._ (He knows how hard it is not to want, though. He hasn't really stopped either, just channeled it into a thread of desire that fuels his vague, all-encompassing seduction; it's a good quid pro quo.)

When it's five and they say that they have to go, Tom and Jefferson tell them how to get out of the city and wish them a happy trip. They stand up to shake Harry and Zayn's hands, still close and evolving comfortably in each other's presence. The way they move with each other is the same way Harry would imagine a prospective father moves with his pregnant wife in the kitchen every morning once her belly starts to show: there are no collisions. 

Tom pulls Zayn back as they start to leave and whispers hurriedly in his ear. Harry stays at a distance, aware that their conversation is private – he smiles awkwardly at Jefferson who's smiling back, something warm and reassuring that seems to say that it's nothing, that it's okay. Harry appreciates the gesture, slightly paternalistic as it is. He's three years older than Harry at most, if Harry's vague calculations of his blurry twenty-something-ness are exact. Then again, he's been wrong before.

"What was that about?" he asks Zayn when he joins him, his stride the ambulatory version of a drawl. 

"Nothing," Zayn says. 

Harry can't determine if his face is shut, if he's happy or offended or just doesn't care. He decides to drop it until further notice – if Zayn wanted to tell him, he would've, and he hasn't.

Zayn takes the wheel; they're quiet as they navigate their way out of the city, The Kills a pleasant background music to their numerous mistakes in navigation. Once they manage to find a straight road that seems to be going approximately where they want, they stop on the side of the road to scribble some endearments and just as many insults on the cards to Louis and Niall. Harry digs through his pocket to find Liam's address in the Bahamas, but when he doesn't find it they decide to send it at his house. 

"It'll be for when he comes back," he says. "Like a 'Welcome home' kind of thing."

Zayn laughs, writes 'Home sweet home, tosser,' on the card and hands it to Harry, resting back on his seat. He closes his eyes to enjoy the sun, eyes still shielded by his ridiculous sunglasses, while Harry writes a small novel to Louis. 

"You done yet?" he asks approximately every five seconds, but Harry decides to be the better man and ignore him. 

Eventually they stash the envelopes in the glovebox – "To post later," Zayn says, even though Harry is 70% they'll forget and only find them when they're back in London – and take the road to Folkestone. Zayn is considerably more chipper as he was the first day and, more importantly, considerably more awake, and they put the Smashing Pumpkins on and sing at the top of their lungs, making silly faces at the drivers who shoot them angry glances. They probably break one of two speed bans – Liam would be horrified – but they don't get caught, so it's not like they care. 

At this speed, it takes them a little less than two hours to go from Brighton to Folkestone, and when they get there it's barely seven. It's still the summer, so they drop their names a little to get tickets for the Shuttle and book Harry's car, but still, it's pretty easy.

According to Murphy's law, that's when Zayn starts hyperventilating quietly, about five minutes before the train is due. 

"It's a _train_ , Zayn," Harry tries to reason with him. "It's like, the second safest way to travel after the plane."

Zayn looks at him with big frightened rabbit eyes. Harry forces himself not to find it funny, but it's pretty funny. "We should have taken the plane."

"Zayn. It's safe."

"It's hundreds of tons of water over our heads," Zayn bitches. 

"I thought you were excited about this!"

"I was. Before I realized it was a bad idea. Let's go back to London."

He actually starts walking in the opposite direction, which is ridiculous and also pointless because it's not like he's going to get to London by _foot_. 

"Zayn, come back. We're going to Paris. It's going to be amazing."

"We're going to die," Zayn says, like he genuinely believes it. 

"Yes," Harry nods, and Zayn shoots him a panicked, accusatory glance, like, _aren't you supposed to comfort me?_ "When we're old and wrinkly and a hundred and four and we've won at least four other Brits, and maybe an Oscar or summat."

(Zayn smiles, because it's a promise they made between the five of them in the bungalow the last time they went, huddled around the fire, Louis's fervent voice hushed in the darkness, "We're going to stay together forever." Harry couldn't see his face in the half-darkness but he knows his eyes were shining blue blue blue when he said 'forever'.)

"You're shite at comforting people," Zayn says weakly. 

"I do my best," Harry says with a shit-eating grin. 

"Let's go, you wanker."

When it's time to board the train Harry pretends not to notice that Zayn's holding his hand hard enough to crush it (which is a feat, because frankly it's fucking painful). He lets go after much coaxing and relaxes the slightest bit in his seat. Harry tells him to sleep; the trip's not that long, three hours at most, and by the time he wakes up it'll be all over. Zayn won't, though – he watches through the windows and into the darkness, as though trying to find something there. 

"We're in a tunnel, basically," he says.

"You genius, you."

Zayn turns around to glare. "Shut it," he says, but he's smiling and he doesn't look like he's going to snap if someone touches him anymore. 

Harry talks to distract him, about Paris and where they're going to stay and how amazing it's all going to be. They've been there before, during their first promo tour, but they only stayed one day and didn't get to do anything because back then the fans were completely mental. They came back back later, when the hype had died down a little, with more music and less rabid under-sixteens, but they still didn't do much except the obligatory visit to the Eiffel Tower ("Well," Louis had said upon coming back down. "It's just an ugly phallic bunch of metal." They'd all laughed and agreed, even though Zayn had tried to defend the view for a few minutes.)

"Is there something you want to see?" Harry asks Zayn. 

Zayn shrugs, his eyes still fixed on the darkness. Harry sighs and he turns around, blinking twice, as though he was fighting off a kind of heavy daze. "Sorry," he says. He squeezes Harry's knee. "Kinda want to go to Notre Dame?"

"Yeah sure," Harry says, looping an arm around Zayn's shoulder and pulling him close. Zayn isn't the most tactile of them, but he relaxes into the embrace, settling easily against Harry's ribs. Harry breathes him in. 

"Anything else?" he asks, feeling suddenly tired. Zayn just hums in response. 

The silence lingers for a few seconds, until their breathing becomes synchronized. The heat oozing from Zayn's body lulls Harry into a heavy sort of drowsiness, like a stormy weather with clouds full of warm rain, preparing for a monsoon. 

"We're so small," Zayn says quietly, laying his head on Harry's shoulder. Harry's fingers start carding through his hair almost mechanically. 

Harry remembers that book he read when he was a teenager, _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_ , remembers how he hadn't understood being small and invisible and feeling unloved, not really, how he'd thought that line everyone got tattooed was a bit corny—but now he can't help but think it fits, think: maybe we really are infinite.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even going to pretend that this chapter isn't my sort-of-love-letter to Paris. So... enjoy?

When the train whirs to a halt their watches show five and the big train clock six. Zayn complains of a headache and Harry can feel one too, brewing silently in his brain. He grinds his teeth, trying to remember what their plans were. When he called back when they were in Brighton, Nick told him Alexa has a model friend who lives in Paris in the fifth district ("It's all posh and shit," Nick said delightedly, in typical Nick fashion), and Alexa was happy to call her and ask her to lend them her couch for a few days.

They have to wait for a bit before the cars arrive, but Harry had good hopes they can make it to Paris before the night. They sit at a nearby café – Zayn orders a hot chocolate even though the air is cloying with late-afternoon summer warmth ("I need chocolate," he says when Harry arches an eyebrow his way, still a little shaken by their journey to the center of the earth) and Harry a beer. They start making a schedule on a napkin, but get bored halfway through. Zayn doodles over it, blabbering about 'proper roadtrips' and how they're all about spontaneity and impulse. Harry mostly just snorts at him. 

Eventually the speakers announce it's time to get the cars. They struggle to get out of the train station, of course —Zayn grumbles all the way that train stations are made to make you hate life and Harry just nods indulgently, placating. Zayn still insists on driving. 

"You've done all the driving since we left," he says. "Give up the wheel, Styles."

Harry takes the offer as what it is, as a way of apologizing for sleeping for most of the first day's drive, for being quiet and sad and still licking his wounds. 

"Thanks," he says, and after a moment's thought, adds: "I'm still choosing the music, though."

Zayn makes an affronted face. "No way. You got it for, like, two days. I love Ed, but if I hear _Kiss Me_ one more time, I'm going to puke."

"That song is genius!" Harry protests, but has the good grace to look a bit abashed when Zayn gives him a Look. "Okay, not Ed, then. But I'm not listening to the top 40."

Zayn raises an eyebrow at him. "You mean the kind of music that we actually make."

Harry waves it off. "Whatever. We're not at work, this is my holidays, I'm not listening to Flo Rida, period."

After much sighing and grumbling about him being ungrateful, Zayn surrenders the radio to him. Harry thanks him by putting _We found love_ on (he still has that stupid crush on Rihanna) before one of the (many, most of them strewn around his and Louis's flat) mixtapes Nick made him. Zayn sighs when the first notes of _Transatlanticism_ trickle in, but he's smiling. 

It takes them longer than Harry thought it would to actually reach Paris – they're not used to the way of driving and everyone's on the road, what with it being the summer and all. By the time they get to the city it's almost midnight and they're both tired, their throats raw from talking about everything they could think about, singing along to Garbage and fighting about music. There was silence, too, like there wouldn't have been with Louis, long stretches of it spreading colourless and comfortable as Harry watched the landscape run to try and keep up with them. 

Harry's head is lolling on his shoulder when Zayn's fingers brush against his cheek. "Wake up, Haz," he says. "We're there."

Harry gets the map out and helps Zayn navigate his way in the winding streets. The city is big; not as big as London, but they don't understand the signs and the only thing they have is Anna's address, scribbled on a bit of paper. Maybe they should have planned this better, on second thought. The fifth district is one of the oldest ones, and also in the far centre of the city. They decide to park the car and walk the rest of the way when they get near the Rue Mouffetard —the streets are mostly pedestrian. Besides, there's always the tube if they et lost, Zayn remarks with a shrug.

They grab a crepe as they walk down the Rue Mouffetard. The vendor, a harried-looking dark-skinned man, speaks French about as well as them. Zayn fumbles with their shiny euros (they had the good idea to change their money in Calais) and he hands them their food, mouth down. 

They eat without finesse, getting their fingers sticky as they stumble on the paved street, sometimes looking up to catch the delicate outline of the architecture on the pollution-orange sky. 

"Fuck," Zayn says, and he reaches to lace Harry's fingers with his own, their fingertips sticking together with sugar. "We're in Paris, man."

Harry smiles down at the ground, tugging on Zayn's hand to bring him closer. He knocks their shoulders together, locked hands swinging. "Yeah, we are," he says, biting a smile into his lower lip. 

He can't tell exactly what Zayn's expression means when he turns toward him – it's dark and the only sources of the light are restaurants, warm amber oozing out to outline their shadows on the pavement. 

"Thanks," Zayn says. It resounds a little in the mostly empty street. 

"Yeah," Harry says. "'s okay."

"No," Zayn insists. "Thanks. I needed that."

Harry hears what he's saying, _I owe you the full story but I can't tell you right now_. He nods. 

"It's fine," he assures. "Everyone needs a holiday from time to time, yeah?"

"I guess," Zayn shrugs. There are remnants of chocolate at the corner of his mouth, but Harry doesn't tell him. 

"I think this it it," Zayn says after a few moments' silence. It takes Harry a second to remember what they were searching for. When he does he looks up: the building is high and narrow, with a big door and an iron knocker. Harry flips his phone open to find the text with the code and dictates it to Zayn, who punches it into the machine. The door swings open, revealing a paved path leading into a sort of tiny garden, complete with small stone fountain and lush plants, the closed buds hints of colour among the leaves. 

They gape at it for a second before attacking the stairs. Not for the first time since they've been gone, Harry appreciates the fact that they have virtually no luggage, which makes it ten times easier to climb the five flights of narrow, wiry stairs than it would have been with the enormous suitcases they drag around on tour.

Harry knocks as quietly as he can, not to wake the neighbours. They wait for a few seconds before Anna opens the door in sweatpants, her wavy red hair flowing around her shoulders. She's holding a ball glass of red wine that she sets on a coaster when she sees them. 

"Hey," she smiles. "Welcome to Paris, Harry and Zayn of One Direction."

Zayn grunts. "Please, don't call us that."

She laughs. "Come in, come in," she says, moving out of the doorway. "Sorry, I know it's small, but I live alone, so." 

They set their meagre luggage down in the doorway and follow her to the living-room. "It's really nice," Harry says, more out of politeness than anything else, but realizes he means it when he looks around him at the mismatched furniture, thick curtains and comfortable-looking couch. There are potted plants in front of the windows, their leaves charged with baubles as though they were tiny Christmas trees.

Anna gestures to the couch. "Um, this is a pull-out, so you can sleep there? I mean, if you're okay sleeping in the same bed, otherwise I have a spare air mattress, but it's really not as comfortable."

"It's okay," Zayn says, sitting down on the couch and breathing out a soft sigh when he sinks into it, the material moulding itself to the shape of his body. "We're used to it."

Anna arches an eyebrow. "Okay," she says, drawing the 'o' out. 

Zayn blushes. "Not like that," he protests, making Anna laugh. "Just, I guess we're tactile or whatever."

"Or whatever," Anna mimics. Zayn shoots a foot out to try and kick her in the shin, instinct from his family of adopted brothers, but she jumps out of reach. Harry laughs at their antics. 

"Do you boys want wine?" Anna offers, raising her own glass. "I've got more where this came from."

"Yes please," Harry chirps happily, plonking down next to Zayn on the couch. It holds up to its promises, it's almost criminally comfortable. Sleeping in this after a day of travel is going to be heaven. 

The couch caves between them and Harry slides right against Zayn's ribs, slotting against him as he always does, seamlessly. Harry always wonders if all the time they spent together —24/7, pretty much— since they met shaped their bodies after their friendship, easily fitting and almost edgeless save for a few sharp springs and bony, still-adolescent knees. 

He hums, almost purring when Zayn fingers find their way into his hair, scratching the short hairs at his nape. "You're the best, Zayner," he murmurs, and he sees Zayn smile down at him through half-open eyes, his knees splayed open comfortably. Harry kind of wants to stay like that forever. 

Anna coos at them when she returns with two high glasses filled with wine. "You're adorable," she says, chuckling when they both glare sleepily at her, coordinated.

She puts on a record on the turntable in the corner of the room, and it only takes a few notes for Harry to recognize _Aladdin Sade_. He hums along. The sound reverberates in Zayn's bones. Anna sits on a cushion on the floor on the other side of the table, legs crossed under her, her soft T-shirt hanging low. Harry twists around to look at Zayn and catches the way his eyes linger on the strip of bare skin where neck meets shoulder. He files it away to add to the long list of questions to ask him. 

"D'you have any ideas what you want to do while you're here?" Anna asks them, resting her glass precariously on her knee. She ties her hair in a sloppy bun, strands brushing her forehead. Harry tries to see her through Zayn's eyes. Is she desirable? She's beautiful, that's a given, but -

"Not really," Zayn says behind him, and his shrug runs like a ripple through Harry's body. "Niall made us promise to go to Disneyland, and we already did the Eiffel tower when we came here on tour, but that's all. We'll just play it by ear, I guess." Harry feels his smile like tangible heat warming the top of his head. 

Anna hums. "I can show you a few things, if you want?" she offers. "I mean, I have work and all, but this week end, if you're still here… do you know how long you're staying?"

"No," Zayn says. Even without seeing her, he can feel that she doesn't mind, would probably let them crash on her couch if they decided to stay for half the summer. Nick's friends are like that; Harry can't help but be glad they stayed friends, even after what happened. 

They talk a little more after that, Harry quietly drowsing against Zayn's side, only catching snatches of conversations, about music and life and love and grocery shopping. Eventually Anna stands up, her sweatpants coming to rest on her narrow hips, fabric pooling around her bare feet. "You're probably tired, yeah?"

Harry nods and Zayn laughs, low and rumbly. It resonates in Harry's body. "Yeah," Zayn says, and then his shoulders sag all of a sudden, as though his body only realized it now that he said it. "Yeah," he repeats, this time with more intent. 

Harry hears Anna shuffle around the room, clearing away the glasses. The music stops. "I have work tomorrow, anyway," she says, yawning. "I'll bring you sheets, you just wait here."

Then there's the clinking of glass and her footsteps leading away. Zayn's hold on Harry's shoulders loosens the slightest bit, his knuckles skimming across the skin. Harry hums. 

"Looks like the universe wants us to sleep in the same bed these days, hey, Haz?" Zayn says after he and Anna have made the bed and the both of them have slipped between the seets, voice tired. 

Harry hums again. "Yeah," he tries to say, but it comes out a hoarse murmur. 

"I guess it could be worse," he hears Zayn say, the words laced with the familiar understated tenderness, and then he's out like a light, thoughts fading into a comfortable darkness. 

*

He wakes up to clear sunlight streaming through the blinds. "Hmm," he says, and shifts around to try and determine where he is, hoisting himself up on his elbows. 

It's only when his gaze catches on the turntable that he remembers. He searches around him for a clock; when he looks next to him, Zayn is still out, curled on himself. He looks twelve with his long eyelashes and scrawny build, tattoos hidden under the white sheets. Outside the sunlight is radiant, golden and white like an underripe peach, and he decides it's probably too early to be up. He's on holiday, anyway. He lets himself fall back on the pillows and exhales a soft sigh when they cave in to cradle his head. 

It takes a little time before he gets used enough to the unfamiliar smells and perceptions to be able to go back to sleep, now that he's got the necessary rest. He thinks about how bad for his jet-lag this is going to be, and really, they should know better by now -- but he's asleep before he can finish the thought. 

When he wakes up again, the first thing he notices is the empty space beside him. He closes his arms around the sheets, tugging them closer around his body for warmth. He thinks about getting out of bed but finds that he's content just being there, breathing as he slowly gathers his consciousness, eyes straining to accommodate to the light. 

There's a shuffle in the next room and it's only a few minutes before Zayn appears, wearing sweats and an oversized t-shirt with Jim Morrison's face on it.

"You bought clothes," Harry says. 

Zayn laughs. His cheeks dimple and Harry feels the need to blink again. "Anna lent them to me," he says, smiling. "Apparently they're her ex-boyfriend's?" He tugs on the hem of the T-shirt. "All I can tell you is the guy was a bloody _giant_."

Harry hums his approval, swallowing the _it's a good look on you_ that's threatening to slip from his tongue. Sometimes Zayn gets weird about compliments. "What time is it?" he asks groggily. 

"Almost eleven, you wanker," Zayn says, digging into their bag and tossing another T-shirt at him. "So much for sightseeing." Harry regrets not having his Ramones T-shirt with him (Louis dubbed it his 'lucky T-shirt' after the night where Harry managed to pull not one but two people while wearing it, and started hoarding it when Harry wasn't looking. It's always reassuring, grounding, smelling Louis when he isn't there, the scent of his skin mingled with aftershave), but the Radiohead one is okay too. 

"You wanna do something today?" Zayn asks. 

Harry has to think about it for a minute. He feels loose, like his skin is an oversized sweater, hanging around his body and sometimes brushing against his ribs. Everything's easy and vague, perceptions floating past him as he watches. "Not really, no," he says, reaching a hand out to do – something, but even his hand feels strange, detached from his body. 

"Lazyass," Zayn says, but doesn't protest further. He takes Harry's outstretched hand and pulls him up, wrapping him into an easy embrace. They frogmarch to the bed, flopping sloppily onto it, legs tangled. 

Harry squeaks a little. It's not exactly surprising, but Zayn isn't usually this physical when the other guys aren't around. The pressure of his hands against Harry's sides feels good, though – Harry twists around not to crush Zayn's arm under him, laying his head on Zayn's chest to listen for his heartbeat. 

"You hungry?" Zayn asks, and it takes a few seconds for Harry to relate his question to the low rumble his stomach let out. 

"Later," he mumbles. Zayn hums approbation. 

"You wanna order pizza and watch a movie?" Harry nods, chin hitting Zayn's chest. 

"Ow," Zayn says at the same time as Harry apologizes, and they laugh.

Despite his offer to order pizza, Zayn doesn't show any indication of standing up. "What d'you do this morning?" Harry asks. 

"Went to the market," Zayn says. Harry doesn't need to look up to see him pout when Harry laughs. "No, really. I didn't buy anything, though. Postcards."

Harry's heart grows six sizes at once. He feels like he's choking on it, like the arteries are right there on his tongue. He tightens his hold on Zayn, brings his head down and presses their foreheads together, so hard that he can feel the bones Zayn's skull against his skin. 

"Easy, Haz," Zayn murmurs. Harry feels a little guilty – he's the one who should do the comforting. He isn't usually this intense, but sometimes it just gets to him, how lucky they are to have found each other, how easily everything they have could have never happened.

"Right," he says. He pushes Zayn off and Zayn goes willingly, grabbing Harry's arms. They wobble for a second, and finally Zayn falls back on his bum, taking Harry down with him in the process. 

"You arse," Harry says, and tackles Zayn back down as soon as he's gotten his breath back. They play-fight for a few minutes, until Harry has Zayn pinned to the ground, heaving heavily. 

He blinks. He knows how this goes, being attracted to his friends – he's not overly bothered by it, it happens sometimes, they're all fit lads and Harry's kind of easy. He knows Zayn's – well, he's still a heartthrob, that's all that needs to be said. It's just that he looks particularly good like that, pink pinpricking his cheeks, sweat pearling at his temples. 

Zayn cocks an eyebrow. "Enjoying the view?" he mocks, wriggling under Harry. Harry tries to ignore the flash of arousal that shoots in his stomach. Right. 

"Oh yes, Zayn, you're so _lush_ ," he swoons. Zayn guffaws and pushes him off. 

Harry pulls a Louis-face. Someone needs to when he isn't there. "Rejection _hurts_ , Malik," he says. 

Zayn punches his arm weakly, standing up. "You twat," he says. He slings an arm around Harry's shoulder and drags him to the kitchen. They get frayed bowls ("I don't want the yellow one," Harry says. "It's ugly. It looks like – I don't know, it looks nasty. And mean." Zayn considers the bowl for a few seconds. "It does look nasty," he says, and they both burst out laughing at their own ridiculousness. In the end, though, none of them take the yellow bowl – you never know) for their cereal, Harry's blue and Zayn's white with an assortment of cows drawn over it ("Don't say it," he tells Harry threateningly when Harry opens his mouth) and move to the living-room. They attempt to watch a movie on the telly but everything's in French. They do try to go with the flow, but after a few seconds of not understanding a bloody word they get tired of it and Zayn designates Harry to go rent them a DVD. 

"Why me?" Harry whines, settling deeper in the couch. "I'm not even dressed yet. I just woke up, you monster."

"Well, I already went out, you ought to discover the city of light or whatever they call it. I'm doing you a favour, really." 

Harry snorts. 

"I'm the one who's heartbroken," Zayn pouts. 

It takes Harry by surprise – it's the first time he's talked about it since they've been gone, and it's so sudden and anticlimactic, so unlike anything Harry expected, that he doesn't know how to react. He glances nervously at Zayn, and the only thing he gets in return is Zayn's cool black gaze. Harry thinks he's right to interpret it as _that's it for now, please don't ask_ , but he could be wrong. It's hard to know with Zayn; he doesn't really have the most expressive of faces, if Harry's being honest. 

He protests a little more for show and steals Zayn's wallet to pay for the DVD, declaring executive choosing rights. Zayn yeah-yeahs and shoos him out of the apartment. 

The sun blares at him when he exits the small garden-entrance-thing (he thinks he saw a cat and a little redheaded girl hiding behind a flower pot just now, he'll have to investigate that), and he has to shield his eyes for a moment as he gets used to the unnatural brightness. It seems like the sun is shining right down on him; he blinks once or twice before resigning himself to squinting as he starts walking towards where Zayn told him the rental place was. (And why he actually bothered to remember where it was and didn't rent anything, Harry will never know. He suspects Zayn did it just to be annoying. That, or pure laziness.)

He gets lost, of course, but it's not really unpleasant. He buys a pain au chocolat from a posh-looking little bakery, smiling back to the young woman who serves him. There are wafts of roasted chicken coming from up the street, so he follows them, helping an old lady when she sticks her heel in a ridge in the paved road. She takes his proffered hand but shoots him a withering glance as she straightens her skirt and walks away briskly, muttering a thank you in French. 

Still, there's about nothing that could spoil Harry's mood – he's happy and the sun is pouring on his shoulders, sweat already plastering his T-shirt to his back and his curls to his forehead. It's his favourite kind of weather – it's messy and it's over-enthusiastic, and people only react to it in strong ways, cursing the heat or giving up to bask in its golden glow. 

He does find the rental place eventually and fumbles through the four or five French words he knows to check his film out. The clerk gives him a nasty look, sizing him up. Harry sees the glint of recognition in his eye, but luckily the man doesn't acknowledge it, shoving the DVD in a bag and informing him that it has to be back before 24 hours or else. Harry beams back as brightly as he can. 

He buys dates and grapes on the way, even though Zayn doesn't deserve them. He loves grapes. 

As he pushes the heavy door he sees a tuft of red hair again, but it disappears back up the stairs as soon as he steps inside. Harry chuckles to himself. 

Zayn is sprawled on the couch when he makes it up the five million stairs. Good thing he goes to the gym, Harry thinks absently, because he definitely wouldn't look like he does if he relied only on his natural athleticism. Zayn salutes him vaguely, shifting over ever so slightly when Harry sits back next to him. Harry nudges him with his hip, flinging his legs over Zayn's when he refuses to move. 

"French TV is dumb," Zayn declares suddenly. 

"You don't understand a word of what they say," Harry counters. 

"And yet I get that it's dumb. Which means it's really super dumb. World-class stupid."

Harry sniggers. "British telly isn't much better," he remarks. "Like, we have Dragon's Den, that's pretty stupid."

Zayn tilts his head. "True. Still, we have nothing on the French."

Harry doesn't have much more to say on the subject, so he lets Zayn have the last word. Besides, his little smug pout is verging on adorable. 

"So, what'd you get?" Zayn asks, moving a little so that they're more comfortable. It's strange to actually have room, for once —usually the five of them end up crammed together on the nearest piece of furniture available that vaguely resembles a couch—, but Harry snuggles into Zayn's side anyway. Old habits, and all that.

" _The Matrix_ ," he says, waving the DVD in the air. "Went for the classics."

Zayn shrugs, but he looks happy enough with Harry's choice. "Could've been worse," he says, grinning a little. "To be honest, I half expected you to come back with some obscure French thing with Romanian subtitles or something." Harry whacks his arm half-heartedly. "'s the first one, though, right? The other two are utter shit."

Harry cocks an eyebrow, like, _who do you take me for?_ "'course," he answers simply, and slides to his knees to slip the disc in the DVD player, Zayn's gaze following him. 

They watch the first half of the movie in a state of slight comatose, pressed against one another and watching the screen with glassy eyes, and only start growing antsy as the action speeds up and their stomachs start growling again. "D'you know if there's any food in the flat?" Harry asks. 

"Vegetables, I think," Zayn says with a disgusted frown, slipping his fingers at the nape of Harry's neck and stroking slightly. Harry leans back into it and almost purrs when Zayn's nails catch on his scalp. He looks over to Zayn. His gaze is unreadable.

"Didn't you want to order pizza, though?" he asks, not looking away. 

Harry hums. "I dunno, I feel like cooking," he says, breath catching when a small shiver runs through him as Zayn's fingers brush his skin, warm and strangely purposeful. God, he needs to get laid. "If you don't mind?"

Zayn smiles a little between his teeth, eyes crinkling. "No, sure, go ahead. As long as it's good." He smirks. "You can be my Parisian housewife."

Harry disentangles from him, swatting his shoulder. "You pig," he laughs, and stretches leisurely, groaning when the joints of his arm crack. 

Zayn's eyes snap up from the sliver of skin bared by his T-shirt to his face. "That's disgusting," he says, wrinkling his nose. 

Harry arches an eyebrow. "What, princess, did I offend your delicate sensibilities?"

Zayn glares at him half-heartedly. "Go cook instead of annoying me."

Harry laughs, but he obliges, disappearing into the kitchen. He busies himself with finding something edible – apparently Anna is a big fan of take-out, if the various brochures scattered all around the house are any indication. He manages to round up a few vegetables, as Zayn had indicated, as well as bread and goat cheese. That'll have to do. 

"You still not allergic to anything, Malik?" he shouts. It's been a while since they've lived together. Zayn just grunts in response. 

"I'm going to assume that means no," Harry says to no-one in particular. 

He sets to making grilled cheese and dumps the vegetables in a wok on the side. It's not long before they start fizzling in the oil, giving off a homely, comfortable scent. Harry smiles to himself. He rummages into Anna's cupboards to try and gather a few spices, and manages to find curry and oregano. A kind of hazy melancholy settles on him as he start cutting slices of bread and slathering butter and cheese on them. Cooking always makes him think about his mother, the warm comforts of his pre-celebrity home; settling against his mother's side when he was eight or nine and letting her direct his movements, follow the quiet and confident orders and, when they were finished, bask in the quiet victory of a well-cooked meal. 

He wonders idly if Zayn ever cooked with Trisha before they became famous. He's pretty sure Muslim culture encourages everyone to give a helping hand in the kitchen, but he wouldn't want to stick to stereotypes, and Zayn does have three sisters. He was never very jock-ish, though, as far as Harry remembers. The oven ticks just as the vegetables start turning golden and odorous. Harry settles the heat to a gentle simmer.

Not long after Zayn slips into the kitchen, nose first. "It smells good," he says, leaning against the doorframe. 

"Maybe I can make you eat vegetables after all," Harry says, and ducks when Zayn reaches out to swat his arm, his hand a lazy paw, feline and languid. 

A few moments of silence tick by comfortably. Zayn leans above the pan, sniffing a little. 

"What's it?" he asks, the corners of his lips curling into a smile. 

"Beans, potatoes and onions, mainly," Harry says. "And I made grilled goat cheese."

"All so _French_ ," Zayn chuckles. "You really are a little housewife, aren't you?" He ticks a nail on Harry's apron, a garish plastic thing that reads _Kiss the cook_. 

"Piss off," Harry smiles.

He finishes making the food with Zayn watching him, pouring himself a glass of wine and humming along with the radio after he turns it on, the music a soft background to Harry's work. They don't make conversation, but they don't really need to. Harry feels grown-up, and for once the silence doesn't make him miss the others as it usually does, a vibrant and juvenile ache that tears at his chest and kind of makes him want to keel over. 

Zayn makes a quiet noise of satisfaction when he takes the first bite. They're back on the couch, and the second half of _The Matrix_ is on, all the drama overlooked in favour of the food. Harry smiles in his glass; that's one of the things he prefers about cooking, the simple way it makes people happy, the way it makes them hmm and lick their lips.

"You like it, then?" he asks when the pan is empty and Zayn's plate thoroughly cleaned. 

Zayn arches an eyebrow. "Stop fishing," he chides, unable to hide his fondness. 

The film is finished, so they decide to go outside – they aren't on holiday for nothing, and it would be a shame to be in Paris without visiting anything once again, not to mention that they just spent an entire day procrastinating. They don't really know where to start, though, and they're both too lazy to make a proper schedule, so they grab the map they bought at the station, sunglasses, and decide to follow their instincts. Shouldn't be that hard, right? 

Thankfully, they're right in the picturesque neighbourhood, and even walking in search of something to do turns into an adventure. The market is still wrapping up when they pass it, and they catch the last whiffs of roasted chicken and overripe fruit, people guffawing and sighing as they load their cars with stalls and merchandise. 

They go past the Pantheon and gape at it for a minute. The big building seems almost incongruous there on the top of its little hill, in the middle of the paved turnabout, rising big and white in the cosy neighbourhood. They watch tourists streaming in and out for a few minutes before finally going inside themselves, only for a few minutes, feeling oddly small.

They walk down the street to the Jardin du Luxembourg, resisting the urge to sit on a bench and just laze around for the rest of the afternoon, reading or playing cards like so many flat-hatted Parisians, their legs crossed at the ankle. Harry texts Anna to ask her what she thinks they could do and she takes a second out her busy schedule (which mostly involves sitting around and waiting, according to her, but that's the modelling business for you) to tell them they should try the Louvre if they're going for the full tourist experience. 

They do struggle a bit trying to figure out the Métro, but at least they aren't the only ones – throngs of camera-wearing tourists err from one side of the station to the other, looking around confusedly. The result is almost comical, especially with the Parisians smoothly walking past the gaggle and throwing thems disdainful glares, sometimes deigning to give them obscure explanations if they dare to ask for directions. 

A few fans come up to them, but it's nothing like the way they were mobbed the first time they came to France, fresh off the X Factor and christened with their new superstar status. Harry stills remembers his panic fear of losing the boys, the way he didn't believe prepubescent girls could be that cruel before, just like he didn't understand they were who made them who they are, One Direction ™, and that they could undo him to their fancy. That he wasn't the one with the power in that game, merely a chosen idol. But that's how show-business works, right? At least this kind of show-business – "the kind that makes money," Simon would say. He knows that now. 

They're nice to the girls, sign the posters and take pictures, because they've always been the grateful type (so unprepared, so surprised), and also a little because even if they aren't as famous as they used to be when they were younger, it wouldn't take more than a few days for any report of their untowardness to spread. Better safe than sorry and all that. It doesn't take much time, anyway, and soon they're off to other locations. They pass several monuments they struggle to recognize on the way to the Louvre, a few churches (the big Gothic one – "Notre-Dame," Zayn supplies, chiding), cafés and bookshops. It's really nice, though it's scorching hot.

The place du Louvre is crowded, tourists and Parisians rushing in different directions, their feet hitting the paved ground in an uncoordinated dance. It's big like Paris doesn't seem to be, and they stop for a moment to admire the high buildings and white columns, the see-through pyramid which is sending incandescent reflections in their direction. There's something humbling in this immensity, the craft of it and the men that designed it, painstakingly, over the course of hundreds of years. It's what they need, sometimes – to remember that, no matter what people tell them, they aren't great, they aren't big. They're children. In the white shadow of the pyramid they feel like they can do almost everything. 

A Spanish family brushes past them, knocking Zayn in the shoulder and effectively jolting him out of his dream. Harry takes an inhale, turning to him. "Shall we go in?" he asks, affecting a soldier's pause. 

"Sure."

They elbow their way past the thick crowd and to the queue. It's pretty fucking long, if they're being honest, and what with it being a tourist favorite, more people than usual recognize them. It doesn't help them get into the museum faster, though, so when they (finally) get inside they're sweaty and gross, the ink from their tickets sticking to their fingertips. 

"Ugh," Zayn groans, wiping the sweat that's beading at his temples with the back of his hand. "The Mona Lisa better be worth-it."

"I'm not sure anything would be worth-it, at this point," Harry whines. "What the fuck do I have to do to get a bottle of water in this place?"

Eventually (meaning: after a lot of running around and cursing at the maps, which, though they're in English, are very, very far from helpful) they find the Louvre café, and ridiculously expensive drinks to cool down a little. They take advantage of the pause to peruse the map and choose which section to explore. Anna warned them yesterday evening that the Louvre is big enough that visiting it all would probably take weeks, even if they only stopped in front of the pieces for a few seconds. 

Harry insists on seeing the Egyptian section and says he'll let Zayn decide for the rest – it's his road trip, after all. Zayn smiles into his drink and thinks for a few seconds before choosing the Italian Renaissance (of course – there's no way they're going to go to the Louvre and _not_ see the Mona Lisa) and the Etruscan sculptures. He adds Greek antiquity as they're about to go, because "they're in Paris and they really ought to get the full experience," and apparently the full experience includes Greek sculptures. Go figure.

The museum is actually kind of majestic, even though after two hours Harry is starting to dread getting his shoes off back at the apartment and discovering they've disappeared under blisters or something equally distressing. Zayn is slack-jawed and silent like the art buff that he is, but Harry doesn't mind. He's kind of an art buff himself actually, though definitely less than Zayn, who can probably name half the techniques he sees on the paintings. Harry's more of an aesthete. He didn't used to be like that when he was a child, barely stopped in front of things before he tried to touch, to grab and lick and crush. Growing up helped him with that; his laziness is a form of confidence but also of respect, respect for the life that buzzes around him and that he doesn't want to miss a beat of, whose beauty he tries to grasp best as he can. 

The Mona Lisa is considerably smaller than both of them expecting, and more protected by the clutter of Japanese camera-clutching tourists than by the thin cord and glass case. They're both pretty slim, though, and they manage to slip through the crowd, pausing a few paces away from the painting. It _is_ breathtaking – and the interesting thing about it is that it doesn't even look that spectacular, the colours are kind of plain, if poignant with their subtle golden hue; but there's _something_ about it, her thin smile and her hair, the softness of her skin, that makes the painting what it is. The Mona Lisa. 

When they pull away they both feel a little sated, and they sit on one of the benches in the centre of the room, closing their eyes and letting the noise around them penetrate into their skin. It feels good, not quite peaceful, but like they're integrating some of this country, its people's wisdom and foolishness and speed. They don't talk at all while they look at the Greek statues. They're less impressive —at least for Harry: he's always preferred paintings, anyway, and he's not ashamed to say that it's because of the colours, the way a sculpture never quite catches his eyes the way a vibrant shade of blue does— but beautiful all the same. Again, there's that wonder as to the talent of the people that came before them, that could capture into heavy marble the subtler expressions of human bodies with such skill and precision. It's humbling.

It's almost dusk when they leave the museum. They pass a blinking Ferris wheel, which the sign claims is the "biggest in the world", and think fondly of their own hideous London eye, its reassuring, gaudy presence in the inky night sky. They think about taking a ride, but the queue is long and they're tired, so they bypass it. Maybe next time. 

The metro ride home is somewhat more animated than their visit. They aren't used to not talking for such long periods of time, what with their hanging with Louis during 90% of their free time, so they pour out their feelings about the museum in disordered but happy exclamations. 

"What did you think of that mattress thing?" Harry asks, thinking back to a sculpted mattress that looked so real he was tempted to lay on it. "That was freaky."

Zayn laughs, crunching his nose. His glasses slip down, and he pushes them back up with a be-ringed finger. "It was. It kind of made me want to take a nap."

"And the Greeks, they really liked drawing naked men," Harry says. "Bit of an obsession, seemed like. Figures, with all the arse-fucking going on back then."

Zayn punches him in the arm playfully. "Sod off." A young girl listening to her iPod smiles at them, warm and tired; Harry can't decide if she recognizes them or not. 

The excitement slides out of him slowly, and suddenly his body feels worn-out. It's not a bad feeling, per se – it's the good kind of exhaustion, with the heavy muscles and the sensation of a work well-done. Harry leans against Zayn, their shoulders touching. 

"You okay, mate?" Zayn asks, brushing a quick hand over the small of Harry's back. 

"Yeah, fine," Harry says. "Just tired."

Zayn keeps his arm there until they reach their stop, loose and heavy against Harry's waist, his palm warming Harry's hip. The iPod girl throws them a quick glance before she gets off at her stop; Harry makes sure to smile at her. He's not sure she catches it. 

Their stop is Censier-Daubenton, which means they have to walk a little. The Rue Mouffetard is more reassuring than it is threatening, though, for a street in a foreign country at night – even if they don't know it very well yet, it still feels almost familiar, welcoming with its paved ground and low, incessant chatter streaming out of the bars. 

The redheaded girl isn't there when they slip into the building. Harry makes sure to peek behind the bushes, but he can't spot her little tufts of red hair anywhere. He feels a little disappointed, for some reason. He hopes he'll see her tomorrow; he likes her, even though they've never talked. He's sentimental like that – or call it superstition. 

Anna isn't there when they get home, the key clinking in the door. The weary sun washes over them from the living-room window, starting to turn a bruised shade of orange-red.

"We should make her food," Zayn says. "To thank her."

Harry laughs, quick and tired. "You mean _I_ should make her food."

"Well, yeah," Zayn concedes. "It's not my fault you won't let me into the kitchen."

"I guess you could cut vegetables or something. At least you probably won't mess that up. D'you remember that time when Lou cut his finger and there was blood everywhere on my leek?"

"I was there," Zayn says, slumping on the couch. He exhales a sigh. "Fuck, that feels good. I want to marry this couch," he says, stroking the comforter. 

"You're such a wimp," Harry says. "One museum and you want to marry couches. Really now, Zayner, I'd have thought you were tougher than that." 

Zayn shows him a lazy middle finger. "Piss off. What about dinner, then?"

Harry bites on the happy grin at the corner of his mouth. "You're right. I don't think we have anything left, though. Can't we invite her out or something?"

"I guess we could," Zayn says. "Or maybe ask her what she likes and do something tomorrow? She's nice," he adds, as if an afterthought. 

"You fancy her?" Harry asks without thinking.

Zayn turns around, brows arching, surprised. "What made you think that?"

Harry shrugs. "I dunno. The way you look at her, I guess. It's okay, though, mate – I won't tell Nick you're taking advantage of his generosity to seduce his friends." He grins, then makes a face. "I'm not even sure he'd care. They do have a tendency of all sleeping together. I'm pretty sure Nick's kissed every single one of his friends."

"Including you?" Zayn asks, cocking an eyebrow. 

"Sure," Harry shrugs. 

Zayn looks a little surprised, which – Harry would have thought that was obvious. He was actually smitten with Nick for some time, they were together —fucking, whatever it was— for a while, even though it didn't work out. Zayn doesn't inquire further, though. "I don't know. About Anna," he says when Harry gives him an interrogatory glance. "She's fit and all, just – too soon, I guess."

"You're allowed to let some steam off. No one's asking you to fall in deep forbidden love or anything."

He immediately regrets saying that when Zayn's face clouds over. "I know," he says. "I tend to anyway, is the thing."

Harry snuggles over. This couch really is comfortable. "You're fine," he says. 

Zayn hums, pressing a little closer. They stay like that for a couple of minutes, letting the weariness wash over them, their bones heavy and comfortable. Eventually Zayn is the one who pushes a drowsy Harry off his chest. 

"Up, up," he says, shaking his shoulder. "Shower."

Harry groans. He rubs his eyes, cracks his back. "You're right," he says, voice hoarse. 

Anna's key clicks into the lock while Zayn is in the shower. Harry thinks about standing up to greet her, but he feels warm and cosy, and the couch has slumped to accommodate the shape of his body. He's so comfortable. 

"Hey," he says, turning his head in her general direction. 

She looks tired too, but she's smiling when she flicks the light on. "What's up, Styles? You pulling a David Boreanaz, brooding in the dark like that?"

He raises his eyebrows at the reference, but she just chuckles, unashamed at her nerdiness. Harry decides he likes her. She sits next to him, their thighs almost touching. She's wearing silk shorts that are a nice, pale shade of pink. She lets her head roll back, rest on the back of the couch. 

"Long day?" he asks. 

"Long week," she says, and he turns to see her better, notices the stark, starting-to-fade make-up on her eyes and lips. He wonders how much more there is that he can't see. "It's over soon, though, isn't it?" he asks.

"I don't hate it. It's nice. It's just a little exhausting."

"Yeah," he says, and only thinks for a second before adding: "I know the feeling."

She laughs. "Sure you do, popstar."

There's a pause in the conversation as the shower turns off. Zayn always takes forever in the shower, sometimes Harry wonders what he does in there, wank or pamper or whatever it is that metrosexuals like him are obsessed with. 

"We were thinking of taking you out for dinner," he tells Anna, squinting at her in the half-darkness. "To thank you, you know, for putting us up and all."

"Sounds nice," she says, smiling a little. "Not tonight, though, I'm not in a state to do anything except collapse in my bed and sleep."

"Good," he says. "Because I _really_ didn't feel like going out again. When do you start tomorrow?"

She makes a face. "Too early."

"You want to have breakfast together or something?"

"Sure, if you're willing to get up at the crack of dawn."

"That's what holidays are for, right?" he says, and she smiles.

She gives him the exact hour and suggests a café in the next street where they apparently make really good hot chocolate. "I'm going to sleep now," she says, unfurling from the couch. She touches his shoulder. She really is gorgeous, all long legs and slim waist. She has a nice smile. He can see why Zayn would fancy her now. 

"See you in the morning, then?" 

"Sure," he says, yawning. 

It's barely even ten thirty, the street is still bustling beneath the narrow windows, tidbits of conversation and food smells streaming into the room, muted. Zayn finally comes out of the bathroom, still towelling his hair. 

"That was Anna?"

"You missed her," Harry says. "C'm'ere, help me unfold the couch."

"Hi, Zayn," Anna says as she comes out of her room in anise green flannel pajamas, contradicting Harry's words. "Night, Zayn," she says a few minutes later as she makes the way in the other direction, carrying a cup of tea. 

Zayn huffs a laugh; Anna stops a second to lean against the doorframe of her bedroom. "There's tea if you want, boys," she says, and she disappears into her bedroom. 

"That was quick," Zayn says, taking hold of the far side of the bed. 

"She's working tomorrow."

Zayn pulls; it makes Harry stumble. "Sorry, mate."

"I suggested we have breakfast with her, but it's early. Do you mind?"

Zayn shrugs. "It's fine," he says. 

They finally manage to turn the couch into a bed again, but when they're finished they're both heaving and kind of red. It makes Harry think of their – rather disastrous – attempt at going camping with the lads back when they were starting out and had no idea how to go about pitching a tent —in every way possible. It ended up nicely, though, with all five of them cramming into the one lonely tent they'd managed to set up and wolfing down the marshmallows without roasting them because they couldn't figure out how to start a fire. Harry lets out a chuckle at the memory. 

Zayn glances at him, arching an eyebrow. "What's so funny?" he asks quietly. 

Harry reclines against the cushions, crossing his arms behind his head. He feels more comfortable than he has in ages, like his body is melting, getting rid of all the unnecessary tension. "D'you remember that first time we went camping with the lads?"

A quiet smile stretches Zayn's lips. "'course," he says, and he lays besides Harry, their shoulders touching. They're in Paris, Harry thinks dazedly. "You were all useless with the tents."

Harry slides up on one elbow, his mouth an indignant 'o'. "Who didn't even know what tent pegs were _for_?"

Zayn grins impishly. "Well, I never claimed to be an expert, unlike some peoplet."

Harry doesn't have a retort for that one – he and Louis _did_ claim to be experts, but like, everyone goes camping at least once when they're kids, right? He remembers thinking it couldn't be that difficult. Obviously he was wrong. 

"You hungry?" Harry asks. He is, kind of, but he doesn't really feel up to figuring something out with the few leftovers in the fridge. He could probably fall asleep like that – Anna's T-shirt is amazingly comfortable and his skin feels smooth and clean, like the smell of soap on Zayn. He feels his eyelids drooping already. 

Zayn's in the same state, apparently – his voice sounds groggy when he says, "Can wait 'til tomorrow."

"Was hoping you'd say that."

He does get up to get the tea from the kitchen, though. It's still hot from the kettle, and he pours them two mugs (this time, Zayn's is decorated with various little drawings of cats with French puns under them. It's rather charming), with milk for him. Zayn likes his tea strong, of course – he's an _artist_ , or something. 

He's actually been drawing a lot since the fame thing started cooling down. Harry doesn't think it's a bad thing that it has – this level of success was never maintainable, and even half the following they had then would be considerable. They have a little more, but their fans are older and they've accepted the changes they've made in their music. They're not as invasive as they were, not as focused on their appearance either – but it's not the same, now that Niall and Demi are dating (when they can, given their respective schedules, but they seem to manage pretty well) and Liam and Danielle are married. There's still the rest of them, of course, but they're just not as dashing and _young_ as before. 

"Here," Harry says, handing Zayn his mug. He's gotten under the covers, sitting in the middle of the bed with the sheets pooling around his waist, legs crossed.

"I can't remember the last time we went to sleep that early and the label wasn't forcing us," Zayn jokes, even though they do sleep a lot more now that they have enough sense to know that two hangovers in a row really isn't something you want to experience too often. 

They settle on the mattress, slotting into each other. It's becoming almost automatic now, the way they sleep at a distance while still touching each other, turned in the same direction, towards the window, Harry's arm loosely draped around Zayn's middle or his fingers just resting against the small of his back, keeping them in contact. If it were Louis Harry and him would be intertwined, legs and arms so tangled you couldn't tell which are whose. This is good too, though —a different kind of good, more adult, in a way. 

"Night," Harry mumbles, burrowing his nose into the pillow. 

Zayn hums back. He flicks the light off. 

They're awoken by the shrill shriek of Harry's cell alarm. He'd set it for six, and they open their eyes blearily, rubbing at them with their closed fists. 

"It's still night outside," Zayn groans, pointing at the window. "This is unholy."

Harry is a little more of a morning person, but that doesn't mean he _likes_ waking at the crack of dawn. He almost regrets offering; what was he thinking, seriously? 

"We're just having breakfast," he reminds Zayn, guiding him towards the bathroom with a hand on the small of his back. "We can go back to sleep afterwards, if you want." It does seems to make him brighten up a little, even if he still grumbles – usually when they wake up that early it's to go to work, and they don't get a moment's rest until late in the night. Harry's not going to complain, he loves his job, and he knows millions of people would kill for it, but sometimes it's a little exhausting, drains the life out of you. 

He knocks Zayn's shoulder with his own when they're in front of the bathroom mirror, Zayn splashing his face with cold water and letting out a hiss each time it touches his skin. "Brighten up, sunshine," he says, picking up his razor. "We're on holiday."

Zayn starts brushing his teeth, white foaming at the corners of his mouth. "Wha'e'er," he mumbles through it. It makes Harry laugh. 

Zayn doesn't shave, partly because he likes it (it does look good on him, much better than it does on Harry; he has the bone structure for it) and partly, Harry suspects, because he's too lazy to do it. He puts on the few rings and necklaces that he doesn't keep to sleep while Harry spits, and there's a knock at the door. 

"Need to use the bathroom, boys," Anna's voice drifts through the door. "Hurry up."

"Yeah," Harry says, running to the door to unlock it and let Anna in. "We're finished, we're leaving."

"Thanks," Anna says, pressing a sleepy kiss to Harry's cheek. He's surprised by the intimacy of the gesture for a second before remembers that it's a French custom. Anna laughs at his confused expression. She pushes them out of the bathroom. "Be there in twenty," she says.

The shower kicks in as they shuffle back to the living-room. Harry pushes the curtains open, letting in a flood of light. Zayn winces. 

"Sorry," Harry says. 

They dress quietly in the living-room. They still have to go shopping, Harry thinks distractedly: they're running kind of low on clothes. By the time Anna emerges from the bathroom, Zayn and Harry are lying on the bed-slash-couch, talking about comics.

"The thing is," Zayn is saying, "there always has to be someone who comes from the future and is someone's son and their father at the same time or something fucked-up like that. Comics love that. It's awesome. Also lizard villains."

Harry squints, trying to make the father-son thing make sense. Now he wishes he'd read more comics when he was a kid. 

"How come you read so many comics, anyway?"

"I don't know," Zayn shrugs. "I think the guy at the public library was a fan or something, there was always a huge stack of them there. I was a nerdy kid, kind of a geek, so…" he makes a vague gesture with his hands. 

"Ready when you are," Anna says, lacing her Greek sandals by the door. She's dressed, as beautiful as she was the day before, in a light green dress that flutters on her thighs, her make-up nude, lips gleaming pink.

They hop to their feet. Zayn nearly falls when a cat races between his feet as he goes down the narrow stairs. He stumbles; Harry has to hold out a hand to steady him. A few seconds later, the red-haired little girl races after the cat, making them crowd near the ramps. "Sorry!" she throws behind her, disappearing in one of the flats, the door slamming after her. 

"She's an odd one, that kid," Anna says flippantly. 

Harry thinks about asking if she knows her, but he doesn't. His hand doesn't leave Zayn's bicep. 

They head to a coffee-shop down the street. It's the perfect cliché of a Parisian café, with its homely interior, chipped, rich-coloured cups, though the waiter is nicer than any of the myths would have led them to believe, but it's probably because it's early enough that they're the only ones in. Zayn orders a coffee, Anna a cappuccino and Harry a squeezed orange juice, and they get three of the golden, flaky croissants sitting on the bar to go with that. 

"Last day, then?" Zayn asks Anna. 

She glances up from her croissants, her eyes glinting amber beneath her long eyelashes. "Before last," she nods. "And then I'm free! God, I'm going to eat so much," she says, clapping her hands like a child.

"The glamorous life of a Parisian model," Harry smiles in his orange juice. 

"Oh, by the way," she says, getting her phone out of her handbag. "There's a party on Sunday at my mate Jenna's house. Do you boys want to come? I'm sure she won't mind a couple of surplus popstars."

"Sure," Harry answers immediately. He thinks as he says it that he could have consulted Zayn on the matter, but he's never been one to say no to a party. 

"Yeah," Zayn agrees.

"Fancy dress," Anna adds. 

"Of course," Harry says, smiling. Anna tilts her head, like she's charmed but not fooled – it makes Harry think of Nick and Caroline. It's refreshing, kind of humbling, to be looked at like that instead of like he's the eighth world wonder or something. "D'you know a good place to shop?"

Anna laughs, her neck unfurling white and smooth-looking. Harry looks over at Zayn, to see if his eyes want to touch, but they're impenetrable, black and calm. (Harry does. Harry always wants to touch everything shiny, everything beautiful.) 

"—and there's always Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré," Anna says. It sounds like the end of a sentence, but Harry isn't entirely sure it is. "If you want, you know, Chanel and all that."

Harry shrugs. "Why not." Two years ago, he probably wouldn't have been able to choose a suit without a stylist, but he should be able to manage now. Besides, Zayn always has impeccable taste when it comes to clothes.

The dawn is rising slowly outside, people starting to emerge from back alleys and buildings, and the three of them take a moment to observe as the city wakes up. The sky is a beautiful colour that is probably half-pollution, hovering between tangerine and baby-doll pink. It looks like a cocktail, like all that's missing is a sprinkling of salt on the rim of the glass. 

"Do you know what you're going to do with your day?" Anna asks eventually, breaking the silence. 

"Not really," Zayn says, shrugging. They have vague plans, but museums always get boring after a while, and they both want to get a real feel of the city. They'll probably just end up wandering in the streets, asking random passers-by for directions. It's not like they were ever very organized. 

"There's a great library near Notre-Dame, if you end go there at some point," Anna says.

Harry gives a little shrug, like, _you know, Carpe Diem_. Anna smiles like she finds him amusing again, but it's still more pleasant than anything else. Sometimes Harry likes being challenged, pushed to do things; likes being bantered with and dared to do stupid shenanigans. It's part of his whole dynamic, as Louis would say. 

They talk about a few things they won't remember when they reunite at night, politics, how the people walking in front of them in the street are dressed, the state the music industry's in. The squeezed orange juice is so good Harry even moans a little at some point, which earns him relentless jabs from the other two, you trying to be Meg Ryan or something? The complicity gives them a certain kind of kinship Harry finds himself examining. He doesn't know why he's so obsessed with knowing if Zayn's interested in Anna, if something could happen there – probably his way of trying to fix him.

When it's time for Anna to leave, they walk her to the metro, since it's not really far. Harry likes to think they make a nice picture, Zayn and him framing her, and her with her big sunglasses and her fresh lips, long legs striding forward. When they get to the entrance they give her a hand each and she slips off their fingers to disappear into the swarm of morning workers, giving them a lazy little wave as she does. 

"I like her," Harry says, watching her zigzag through the diverse, though equally stressed-out, crowd. 

Zayn nods. 

"Nick chooses his friends well," Harry adds, and this time it earns him a raised eyebrow from Zayn, _really?_ Harry grins impishly, saying with a half-shrug, _well, it's true, isn't it?_

The depth of their understanding hits him like a truck. The five of them did spend every second of every day together during more than four years, and by the end of it they were capable of finishing each other's sentences like nobody's business, but Harry isn't sure if they ever had this kind of connection. They didn't need words, of course – they still don't, even though they spend more time apart, like proper grown-ups – but he isn't sure there was the same subtlety to it Zayn and him have now. It was more instinctual, he thinks, more raw, like sharing the same high, energy vibrating in every pore. 

This is different. Harry remembers reading a study about the percentage of American people who go on a road trip at least once in their lives – something like eighty percent. They don't do it as often in Europe —not enough territory to travel through, for one, and they actually understand what trains are for—, but there's no denying that they have a certain charm. Harry feels like he could get used to this kind of closeness, living with someone down to the most intimate details, always in motion, going forward. 

In the end they don't go back to the flat to sleep some more. Zayn grabbed all they needed before they went out, so they're prepared for once, ready to hit the city.

Zayn shakes a cigarette out of his pack. "So," he says, slipping it into his mouth with practiced ease. He pats his pockets for a lighter, gives Harry a small smile when he hands him his own. "What do we do?"

"Notre-Dame seems nice," Harry shrugs. He reaches a hand to ask for a go at Zayn's fag. "And I don't think it's far."

Zayn tugs on the cigarette once before he gives it to him, cheeks hollowed, skin tight on his cheekbones. He takes his time to blow out the smoke, blinking when it fans in front of his face. "Sure. Let's."

They have to waddle through the tourists when they get there. The place is packed – Asian people with cameras and dark-haired Latino-Americans, with a few Germans and the obligatory gaggle of Americans. The different languages intertwine in the air, ranging from the whisper to the shout – it makes Harry think of a strange 21st century tower of Babel. Thankfully, their celebrity status —though they've never been exceedingly famous in France, even with this accident at the beginning of their career, when they were mobbed at their arrival into the city and Liam lost a shoe— helps them get into the cathedral. 

It's impressive from the outside, of course, what with the legendary gargoyles and the immense shadow the building casts over its surroundings, but it's got nothing on the inside. They're like polar opposites: where the outside was hot and noisy, people pressing into each other with no respect for any notion of personal space, the inside is, if not pious, at least cold and eerily silent. The impudent tourists that dare raise their voice are fiercely glared at and shushed, most of the time by the same people who were shouting back on the sand of the square. 

It's strange to be inside a church. They were both born in a country where religion has been downgraded to a habit, something grandparents do when they remember to. Harry's family go to the Christmas and Easter services dutifully, every year, but it's been a long time since they stopped going to mass every Sunday. Harry did catechism and his first communion like everyone in Holmes' Chapel. He didn't pay much mind to it; it was just one more class, except it was on Wednesday afternoons, which was boring. But God was never a pressing question for him – were he asked, now, if he believes in Him, he doesn't know what he would say. Yes, probably. It's a balm belief, distant, the kind you only remember in desperate situations. A last recourse. If something tragic happened, he would probably either pray or curse the first supernatural entity came to mind; and he vaguely remembers addressing a small, bewildered prayer to someone the day their first album went number one in the US.

It's a little different for Zayn, he knows. He's about as casually Muslim as Harry is casually Christian, but Zayn's more aware of it —has to be. It's always seemed to him like Allah was more easy-going than God; he loves him like you love a big brother that lives far away, with a sort of remote attachment rather than veneration. And either way they understand this —the cathedral— better than they did the garish American churches, blaring their burgundy and stark-white facades in the clear sunlight, devoid of any sense of modesty. Their European churches are long and dark, with severe angles and mould-covered stones. They make sense.

They fall silent as they walk in, the force of habit forcing Harry to drum his fingers in his palm in pale imitation of a cross sign. They stay for a while, inspecting the architecture in silence, the high vaults and the statues. In the end, though, the thing that grabs their interest the most is the big organ looming above them, mute and magnificent. Harry squints, tries to inspect it as close as he can. He wonders, idly, what a Sunday mass in a place like this looks like, with the immense alley and the powerful bellow of the instrument, the parishioners sitting with their heads bowed, thinking about a hundred things that aren't the glory of Christ. 

They feel strangely sated when they leave. The setting sun heats their cheeks and the – albeit calmer – crowd seems to be shouting at an alarming volume, startling after the quiet of the cathedral. They blink a few times, looking at each other as though they didn't recognize each other; laugh when another blink acts like a revelation. 

"Fuck," Harry says, voice rough. 

Zayn buries his hands in his pockets. "Yeah," he agrees. He makes an aborted gesture to draw his cigarette pack out of his pocket. "D'you want to visit that library Anna was talking about?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry shrugs. "Do you mind?"

Zayn doesn't. They chatter as they cross the bridge, wrinkling their noses at the strange collection of locks clasped on the wired railing. Zayn flicks through the guide he bought back on the square. 

"Le pont des Arts," he says, the syllables rolling uneasily in his mouth. 

Harry laughs. 

"Shush," Zayn says. He skims through the guide, eyebrows furrowed. "Apparently it's romantic. You're supposed to put a lock there to symbolize your everlasting love or summat."

"And you got all that from the French?"

Zayn turns the guide so Harry can read. It's all in English, except for the title. 

"And here I was thinking you were smarter than you actually are," Harry laments. 

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." 

The library is a nice, if startling, contrast with the cathedral. It's right across the bridge, but instead of being splashed in plain view like the cathedral, imposing and immodest, it's nestled into a street corner, so quiet it's almost invisible. There are people streaming in and out continuously but the inside doesn't seem chaotic – there are fairy lights hung on the trees outside, a paved little courtyard where people are sat reading or browsing the books on sale. It looks – charming.

Harry can't help but feel like he's home for half a second. Holmes' Chapel doesn't have this kind of buildings, far from it, but the homely feel of the place makes him ache for the smell of his mother's cooking, a world in which he has anchors that aren't his friends, like the familiar walk from the bakery to the house or the cheery yells when he walks past the school. 

"Let's," Zayn says, grabbing his forearm. 

The touch startles Harry out of his reverie. "Let's."

Zayn's smile surprises him for a second – its warm, as though he knew what was going on inside Harry's head. He forgets all about it as they walk in the library, though. It certainly doesn't disappoint – the interior looks like something out of a fairytale: rows and rows of books taking up every square inch of the place, high enough to reach the ceiling, wooden ladders with uncertain footing, a silence of hushed and fervent conversations. Harry's never really been a fan of books, though he's taken up reading more seriously since they've started getting less famous, but he falls back into the familiar net made of tidbits of conversations as seamlessly as he would worn clothes. It pulls him in with an iron fist; he hadn't realized he missed it so much. 

"It's weird," he says to Zayn, in lack of better words. 

Zayn slants him a sideways smile. "You homesick?" 

"Something like that," Harry says – he rests his head on Zayn's shoulder, pressing his eyelids shut for a second. 

When he opens them back up, he catches a young boy's gaze. He's probably either intrigued by their accent or wondering if he saw them somewhere, or maybe just glancing at them in the casual way you glance at strangers when they disrupt a relative silence. Harry smiles at him. He smiles back, lightning-quick, and looks away. 

"You never really get used to not hearing your language all the time," he muses. He's only realizing it now, but it really does sit like a old ache in his bones when they're away, its own brand of seasickness. 

Zayn nods. He's browsing the books on one of the shelves – sometimes his fingers still for a few seconds, examining the title, the author, and sometimes he pulls a book halfway out to read the summary. Harry watches him for a few minutes, hypnotized by the irregular dance. The sound of piano-playing draws him out of his trance. Most of the customers keep browsing – only a few of them look up, their eyes wide and surprised. 

"What is it?" Zayn asks. He probably didn't hear; and if he did, he was too taken by the books to pay attention. 

"There's an upstairs, I think," Harry says. 

He takes Zayn's hand and draws him through the crowd. They squeeze through a few sections (Biographies, History, Theatre, Poetry and finally Art) to reach a narrow flight of wooden stairs. 

"This place really does look like it just came out of a book," Zayn says, looking around them at the milling crowd squeezing beneath the delicately carved wood fixtures. 

Harry nods. "It does."

The stairs are somewhat perilous, especially with all the people coming down, but it proves worth-it when they get to the top: not only are there more books, as could be expected, there's also a separate room furnished with older, leather-bound volumes with gold titles, as well as a piano and an exchequer. 

"People sleep here," an elderly woman with grey hair and a wide mouth informs them, pointing to the mattress sitting on the floor, next to the piano. "Homeless poets and whatnot. They work for the library and in exchange they get to sleep there for a little while, if they haven't anywhere to stay or if they're travelling."

"It's -" Harry starts, trying to think of something better to end that sentence than 'so cool'. "Great," he decides on. "It's really great."

"It is," the woman smiles at him, and turns away to browse through the books – _An History of Ancient Greece_ , if Harry isn't mistaken. Meanwhile, Zayn has apparently taken more interest in the piano than in their conversation. He's standing in front of the instrument, fingers ghosting over the keys. 

The woman throws him a glance. "You can play," she says before turning back to her books again, missing the interrogatory look Zayn directs at her or maybe just ignoring it. 

Harry settles into the armchair next to the piano. "Yeah," he says, smiling. "Go ahead, play us something."

Zayn started taking piano lessons back in 2014, a few months after the release of their fourth album. Before that only Louis could play out of all of them, a few classic tunes and the James Bong jingle. He never really bothered to expand his repertoire. He's Louis – he's fickle and dramatic and he can't be bothered; in the end, he liked the idea of it more than the actual act of playing. They tried to push him a few times, so he could play on stage the way Niall and Liam do with guitar, but he never went through with it. 

Zayn took it as seriously as he takes everything. He looks suave, lazy like a big cat with the way he moves smoothly, all long fingers and bendy limbs, but in reality when he puts in mind to something he's a perfectionist, has to do it as well as it can humanly be done. It was the same thing when he decided to learn Urdu. They went to the MoMa a few years ago, and they lost Zayn to a painting in the first floor. It didn't look like a lot – a bunch of ink and pencil drawings with swirly letters surrounding them – but Zayn was transfixed, standing in front of it with unblinking eyes. 

He stood there for almost half an hour, replaying the little explanation provided by the museum in his headphones over and over. Harry doesn't remember a lot from back then, too much was happening at once and only the big, shining moments stuck through, but this he remembers. Zayn as he was at eighteen, his wiry frame and big dark eyes eating half his face. He was even sharper than he is today – eyelashes that went on forever and diamond-sharp cheekbones that all the girls were made about.

"I want to learn Urdu," he told them that night at the hotel, when they were all sitting on Niall's bed in their pajamas. 

They didn't understand, at the time, what it meant for him to find a part of his culture that his family had left behind and that he'd only got a glimpse of at celebrations, the strange shape of a letter on someone's tattoo and the dark curl of an inscription in a book. Harry isn't sure they'd understand if he told them now. But he's their friend and they supported him, because that's always the most important thing, especially with someone like Zayn, who never tells you if he's doubtful or insecure, who always keeps everything in. 

He shut himself into his flat for a week when they got their next week off, barely answered their texts. When Liam went to visit him, he was elbows-deep in his books, his eyes red-rimmed under the glasses. 

"What are you doing?" Liam said, bemused. 

"I'm learning Urdu," Zayn answered. 

They never asked him about it, and he never told, but a few weeks after that he got a tattoo in Urdu and since then he's always seemed to be something _more_ , not wiser or greater but just richer, like something had taken root in him and was growing steadily, twining its tendrils around the frail bones of his ribs. It was the same thing when he learned piano. He didn't go about it as intensely as he had with the Urdu thing, because it was something they could all understand and because by then they were older – their friendship wasn't the impossibly tight-knit alchemy anymore but something more rational, tamer. 

They were on tour when he started. He bought a toy piano with headphones and a music textbook, and he learned. He would spend hours curled in his bunk with the piano on his folded knees, glancing up at the book every so often, writing down notes and keys on the staves. They would sit besides him in turns, watching the rhythmic dance of his wrists – sometimes he would look up and smile at them before he went back to it, sometimes try them to chase them away, and sometimes he wouldn't even appear to be aware that they were there at all. When he got frustrated he unfurled out of the bunk, body snapping back to its full height. If they weren't on the road, he would grab his cigarettes and head out, Liam following him after a few minutes. Liam is always the listener, the one who reconciles. It's a little bit ironic, now. 

Harry doesn't remember it as well as he does the Urdu one, but there's the distant memory of leaning against the edge of the bed, the steel railing digging into his back, and a feeling of heaviness as he watched him, chin laid in his palm. It was that sort of warmth that infused him, like he'd been walking for a long time and his muscles were this good kind of sore that only comes from work well-done.

Now, Zayn sits at the piano. He looks a little wary of everything, glances at the scores laid on the piano. He leafs through them distractedly but doesn't seem to find what he was looking for. Harry plays with the glass pieces of the exchequers. He's moving the queen against an imaginary opponent when the first notes ring in the room. It's sudden - Zayn stops for a second, wrists still in the air, taken aback. But he starts again, slower, softer. Harry can't recognize what the melody, probably a classical piece, maybe Bach. Zayn is actually a good player, if a little academic – but the notes flow easily under his long fingers; the old woman even lifts her head and smiles to herself, as though satisfied with herself for allowing Zayn to play. 

He _is_ good – he looks so focused, and it's true that he's beautiful. Harry never wanted to notice this kind of things about the boys too much (look how it turned out for Zayn), but it's difficult when half of what they're known for is their looks. There's always the occasional spark of attraction when Louis twirls on himself and asks him how he looks before they go out, or the lazy desire to snog the laugh out of Niall, but Harry is good at ignoring those. It's not like he doesn't have a whole array of people to take his pick from, after all —hitting on his bandmates would just be looking for trouble. 

This is different, though. The attraction is slow and precise, something about the way Zayn's bones always seem sharper than everyone else's and his slow drawl, like he has all the time in the world. It's not going to be a problem, though. Harry refuses to let it become one. He's going to find someone to shag sometime soon, and it'll all be back to normal. Still – it doesn't mean he can't enjoy it for now, does it? In truth, there's nothing Harry likes more about romantic love than its early stages, the stagnant doubt and the heavy pangs of lust. He likes the uncertainty of it, the way everything turns into a game. It's fun, kind of like… but that's why Liam calls him immature. Maybe he really is like Nick, after all – incapable to keep steady because he likes the thrill of the chase too much. Because he doesn't care enough. 

But see, Harry was always a good friend. He's a champion at loyalty, and the boundless love that goes with friendship comes easily to him. Love —the other kind— just seems to take its roots in muscles Harry doesn't have. It's not a big deal. Harry doesn't miss it. He's good with his collection of friends-turned-lovers-turned-friends, his almost-was and never-weres, his casual one-night stands who make him coffee before he leaves them to a life he doesn't care to learn about. 

Zayn is still playing. His muscles play smoothly under his tee, pulling it tight across his shoulders. Harry notices that he's breathing in time with the music, his eyelids coming down to cast a frayed shadow on his cheekbones when he blinks. Harry watches him through to the end of the piece. He wishes he'd learnt piano too, be it only to understand the mechanical under the flow of Zayn's hands on the keys. 

The woman claps slowly when Zayn finishes. His hands rest where he pushed the last notes down. He turns around to smile at her. She smiles back.

"That was beautiful," Harry says, mostly because he feels like he should say something. He's pretty sure Zayn would've gotten that even if he hadn't said it. 

Zayn nods. "Thanks," he says, low enough that Harry probably wouldn't have heard if he didn't know him, as as though playing had drained all the strength out of him and poured it into the keys instead.

He rests his hands on his knees. For a second Harry thinks he's going to play something else, but he just stands up, his back bowed as though he really is tired. He stretches – a slow smile spreads on his lips. Harry feels his happiness seep into him like collateral damage. 

"That was good," he says. He's not sure what he means – beneficial or beautiful. 

Zayn cracks the bones of his wrist. "Yeah," he agrees. He brushes his fingers over the keys one last time before leaving the room. One of them gives a light ringing sound. 

They visit the rest of the bookshop. There's a typewriter in a sort of small hut, and inside are messages by people come from all over the world; in the back, the private book collection, volumes with cracked, faded spines and crackling pages, ratty cushions, people whispering. They walk side by side; the people who recognize them are silent and respectful, smiling shyly in their direction. They always make sure to smile back. They don't really want to leave – it feels a bit like a refuge, like a shelter from the roaring street outside – but they eventually do.

They grab a late lunch in a French brasserie. The French are strangely stuck-up when it comes to the hours when they eat – all the bars close at midnight and trying to eat after three is a quest for the Holy Grail – but they charm a waitress and manage to wrangle greasy croque-monsieurs and salad out of her.

"D'you want to write the cards?" Zayn asks when they're finished eating, wiping his fingers on his napkin. "I have them here."

"Sure."

Truth is, he tries not to think about the boys too much. He doesn't want to realize how much he misses them, how glaring their absence is; and he'd rather not think about how Zayn and him are changing, either. He's almost a hundred percent sure that it's in a good way, but he's kind of afraid they won't fit with the boys when they come back. What if they don't understand each other anymore? What if it just doesn't _work_? But maybe it's stupid. They've only been gone for two days, after all.

He shakes his head to try and put his thoughts back in order. It doesn't quite work, but the momentary disorientation is effective enough. He scrawls a few endearments disguised as insults on the cards Zayn hands him. 

"Really, Z? The Eiffel tower?" he mocks when he flips them over to see what they look like. "How imaginative."

"Shut it, it was either that or a pug saying something obscene about some random girl's tits."

Harry huffs out a laugh, jotting down a few xs on Niall's card. "Those fucking French," he says, but it comes out fond. He really does love this country. He knows he just hasn't been there long enough to see the bad sides, but he hopes he never will. For now, it's holding well to legend. 

"What do you want to do after?" Zayn asks when they're done, getting his map out.

"There's that party, we have to get tuxes," Harry reminds him. 

Zayn makes a face. "Right," he says. The swanky shops are the same in every country (in fact, they have are French in most of the countries that _aren't_ France) and that's one thing fame really has made them sick of. Affecting good manners while being handled by snotty people who are bitter because they can't wear the overpriced rags they spend their day selling is hardly a party, especially when you're as hyperactive and rambunctious as One Direction still are.

"It better be worth-it," Zayn groans.

"It probably will," Harry points out. "Models and all. Don't you miss sex? I miss sex. God, it's been forever."

"I'm pretty certain it hasn't even been a month, Haz."

"That's forever. Don't you get horny sometimes? You used to love sex."

"Yeah, well." Zayn's face closes down, and Harry understands he's made a mistake. He's never known when to hold his tongue, fuck.

"I'm sorry, I -" Harry starts, but Zayn preemptively holds a hand up. 

"Don't worry about it," he says. "So. Tuxes. Do you want desert first?"

Anything to dispel the awkwardness, Harry thinks. And avoid the tuxes. 

"Sure."

They get ice-cream (they're still kids at heart, nothing's changed on that front since the early days) and eat it as slowly as they can. When they've licked every particle of ice-cream —chocolate for Harry and rock salt caramel for Zayn— off their spoons, paid the bill and left a more than generous tip, there's nothing left to postpone the shopping expedition.

"Right," Harry says with a grimace. 

Zayn laughs at him, flicks his nose. "Don't look like that, you ungrateful twat. You look like you've just learned that somebody had run your puppy over or summat, not like you're on your way to buy an outrageously expensive suit for a party where you'll probably hook up with a gorgeous model. Be grateful for what you have."

"Be grateful for what you have," Harry parrots, sticking his tongue out at him. 

Zayn just arches an eyebrow and ignores him. It makes Harry laugh. 

They end up buying their tuxes in the street Anna suggested, almost entirely out of laziness. They like going about the city at random, only following people's directions when they deign to give them. The guide Zayn bought on the square mostly stays folded in his pocket for the rest of the day, hard spine pushing into the flesh of his thigh. The salesman recognizes them and immediately hurries forward to help them find what they want, more out of respect for their bank accounts than for their talent. He's young, nimble and thin-lipped, with the pre-requisite delicate features. He guides them to the counter, showing the way with his hands.

"Do you have an idea of what you're looking for?" he asks. His shoes are so shiny Harry's afraid he'll go blind if he looks at them too closely. 

Zayn glances at him from the corner of his eye. He shrugs at the salesman. "Formal dress," he says, always a man of a few words, where Harry would have probably been capable of slotting a few 'er' and 'um's . 

They're equipped with glasses of champagne they don't think to refuse and guided further to the back. The salesman seems at home amongst the monochrome racks, fingers brushing against the metal but never the fabric. It's not that different from being dressed by a stylist – this guy is just less funny than Lou.

It really _is_ mindlessly boring without the guys there to make fun of them and rib them about looking 'stylish'. The salesman —Arthur— presents them with black suit after black suit, always insisting that this is 'the one'. Harry never really got anything that wasn't tight jeans and cardigans, anyway, and certainly not the difference between exactly identical three-piece suits. Zayn is a little bit better, and he tries to branch out in colour, but all in all, it's pretty dull. 

They eventually get what they came for, though; Zayn something dark blue with a vest that looks really unfairly gorgeous on him and Harry a tamer grey suit. He feels pettily glad that they're both not dressed in black – there are really that many choices for men, but sometimes Harry wishes he could wear all the sparkly dresses. He doesn't say that, obviously; instead he gives Zayn a very obvious once-over and shrugs when Zayn gapes at him, pretending to be offended not to preen. Harry has a passing thought for how gorgeous he and Anna are going to look together, and it stirs something impatient in his stomach, maybe envy and maybe jealousy, maybe just undetermined lust. That's the prime objective for tonight, anyway: getting laid. He needs it badly.

"Shall we?" he says when they have their bags and they've been unloaded of a few thousand pounds. Arthur looks very pleased with himself, and it occurs to Harry that maybe he's just a guy who's happy to have done his job well. He feels a tinge of pity for the guy, but then it's gone. People can say all they want, it's impossible to be a celebrity without becoming more or less jaded with ordinary people's miseries. 

Harry holds his arm out gallantly for Zayn and Zayn takes it, slotting his arm into Harry's. "We shall," he says, taking one of the bags. He breathes deep when they're outside, even though the air is probably saturated with pollution. "God, it was stifling in there."

Harry hms. Zayn looks strange, a little more agitated than the situation requires. "You okay, mate?"

"Do you know how Perrie and I broke up?" he asks all of a sudden. Harry's taken aback by the question – it was a few years ago, and though they all wondered about it when it happened (Zayn wouldn't say a word, stayed locked in his hotel room for two days and then claimed to be 'completely over it' when he came back out), he'd kind of forgotten about it, if he's being honest. 

"No," he says, trying to project _you can tell me if you want, but you don't have to_. Luckily, they're pretty good at that kind of non-verbal communication between themselves. It saved them a lot of trouble and embarrassment back in the day. 

"I guess you lot think it's because of – well," he gestures vaguely with his hand. Harry nods. It's pretty self-explanatory, as far as those things go. They all realized sooner or later that he was in love with Liam, and it was easy to draw conclusions from there. They've all seen the customary rom-coms, —most of them together, actually. "It wasn't. It's – I mean, those things are always difficult, right? So I guess that was part of it, but it wasn't— it wasn't about that."

"What was it about, then?" He's pretty good at those things, knowing when people need to talk, need to be prompted, pushed, encouraged. 

"Nothing, really. I think that's the worst part, don't you? When people break up with you over nothing. I never really understood the phrase 'fall out of love'. It's like 'fall in love', it doesn't really make sense, does it? You don't just _fall_ for someone like that. It's a process. It's gradual."

He takes a cigarette out of his packet unthinkingly. Harry knows he's been trying to quit, but it's the same way it's always been: he always tries to quit in the summer because it doesn't feel as essential, they have less work, the sky is blue once in a while, they wrangle a trip to the Maldives out of the studio. It's not the same when everything is gloomy outside and they have fourteen-hours days. Harry doesn't judge; he likes to watch the routine, actually. Hand to pocket, pack out of the pocket, draw a cigarette between his index and his middle finger, put the cigarette to his mouth. Light it. Cheeks hollowing. Some people who don't smoke find it repulsive, but Harry's tried a lot of things; he finds it sexy, it anything, though the taste isn't particularly appealing. 

"Anyway," Zayn breathes out, the smoke making the edges of his face blurry for a few seconds. They're taken in by the crowd, and Harry wants to suggest that they go sit somewhere, but he's afraid to break the momentum of Zayn's confession. "She called me, it was – that day, I don't remember. In December. You know I'm bad with this, it doesn't matter, anyway, I -" He's frantic all of a sudden, his hands flying everywhere. The burning embers of his cigarette follow his movements. 

"Calm down," Harry says. 

Anger flashes on Zayn's face, and for a second Harry's afraid that he's going to lash out on him, all the tension and deception finally uncoiling, but he only breathes out, his throat working. "Yeah," he says. "She calls me, and I was somewhere like here, in one of those swanky shops, buying her – God, I don't think I even remember. You're supposed to remember those kind of things. Like, I should know the exact colour of – well, it was a dress, but – anyway. I was buying her something, and she called me, and she's like, this isn't the right time, I'm not the right person, and I was like, what are you on about, you know?" He rubs at his forehead. "It's just, it's so surreal. She says that we should meet, of course, she doesn't want to do that over the phone, but she's feeling – I don't know, brave, I guess, this must be what she told me, not the exact words but. Over nothing."

He looks so defeated, standing there. Suddenly Harry realizes how thin he is, they've been travelling for a few days now but his cheekbones are still protruding. He was always slim, and the smoking doesn't make it better, but right now for some reason it's shocking to Harry. 

"Anyway," he says, ducking his head, sucking on his cigarette. "It's just – the place. Made me think of that. If you wanted to know. Which you probably don't."

"I do," Harry says, as softly as he can. He's good to listen to confessions but in the end he's not sure he's good at handling them after they're out. Maybe he should've thought of that before. He kind of feels like staying there for a minute, his arms hanging at his sides, digesting the whole thing. 

It's just that it's weird. Usually when they have this kind of conversation it's the five of them crammed in a too-small bed, with junk food over the covers, and one of them is crying. Well, 'usually' isn't really the word. Sometimes it happens like that, and sometimes there are private confessions that unlock when they're just two of them, three sometimes —but the point is, it travels around and soon enough they all know, because that's how they work. No secrets. Even if they wanted to keep some, Harry's not sure they could. 

So it's weird to be there with Zayn and have this dumped on him, this big confession about love and emptiness and whatever that was about. He's—

"And then," Zayn goes on, more softly, "I just didn't understand. Did you ever have this period of time, right, where you just _don't get it_? It's what happened for me. We saw each other, she explained what she meant, said a whole lot of crap about being at different places in our lives and whatever, but I just couldn't get it. I didn't hate her, I don't, even now, it's just… I don't know. Bewilderment, I guess."

Harry can't keep from laughing at this point. It's a good thing, as it turns out – it defuses the tension a little, the electricity crackling between them in the invisible space where Zayn throws his words, forces it to settle down to a gentle simmer.

"Oh, shut up. But yeah. Couldn't get it. That's why I stayed in my room for all this time, even when you wankers were banging down the door trying to get me to come out. I guess I was just trying to work it out. Like a very shitty rubix cube."

Harry laughs again. It bubbles out of his lips irrepressibly, half from the surreality of the situation – Zayn spilling his guts in the middle of the poshest street in Paris – and half from genuine amusement. "A rubix cube, Zayn? Really? You couldn't find a lamer metaphor?"

Zayn frowns, but Harry can see a small grin stretching his lips. "You're a shit. _Yes_ , it was like a rubix cube, you got a problem with that? Hell, try doing that one. Perrie's not the simplest girl. She's -" He stops there, and for a moment he's just staring at nothing, an invisible point in the distance. He shakes his head. "But then you gits got too noisy and I had to get out. The thing is," he adds in a rush, like he's afraid he won't have the time to finish, "the point of all this, is I wasn't there at all, you know? I hadn't fallen out of love with her at all. I was still in it, and she goes, we can't be together because we don't connect or whatever, and I guess that would have been okay if it was mutual, but it really wasn't?"

He claps his palms on his thighs. "Whatever. But yeah, that's the story."

"Thanks," Harry says. There's a silence between them, threatening to become awkward at any moment, so Harry says the first stupid thing that crosses his mind: "So you're what, bi?"

Zayn startles, and then his eyes fix on Harry, exhausted but warm. "You really _are_ a shit."

And then they're good. They're just good. Sometimes Harry can't really believe what friendship does to people. But it works: Harry takes Zayn's words with him, stores them somewhere in his brain to ponder over later, and Zayn looks a little lighter, a little freer, even maybe happier. 

The end of the afternoon drags on. They sit at a café and sip their overpriced coffee while writing the rest of the postcards. Harry draws a lot of stupid shit on his, and Zayn follows his lead, doodling increasingly offensive versions of their friends on all the surface of the card. When he's finished, Harry scribbles 'love xxx' in one of the remaining blank slots, and they collapse on the table with laughter. 

They don't hurry to come back to the flat. They're too young still to really have mastered the art of walking and taking in things around them at the same time, but they invent lives for the people they pass by, trying to be discrete and failing. 

"This one," Zayn says, pointing to a black man in a tweed jacket and glasses, "works in, like, advertising. He has a wife. No children. Secretly likes football. Goes to concerts."

"And this one," Harry decrees about an old woman dressed entirely in blue, "had, like, muesli for breakfast this morning, um, and, okay, right, she does yoga in her free time and she has this little—"

"You're rubbish at this," Zayn frowns. Harry bites his shoulder. 

They laugh; it feels good to be there, now, in the sweltering sun, playing with people like they're modeling clay. It feels like it could go on forever and it wouldn't get old, or boring (but it would – everything does) — the sort of fleeting sentiment that's the essence of happiness.


	3. Chapter 3

They're a little drunk with it by the time they come back to the flat, leaning against each other, woozy with red wine and a few shots of cordial offered by the owner of the pub they retreated into, who witnessed their antics. Anna is already there, puttering around the living-room. 

"You're late!" she throws over her shoulder, and they catch a whiff of perfume. 

They apologize half-heartedly. 

"It's not like it takes forever to put on a suit," Zayn mutters as he sinks in the couch. "Everyone's gonna be drunk within twenty minutes, I don't see the point of this 'fancy dress' thing." He's never been all that fond of stuffy parties, since the beginning.

"They're French," Harry says. 

"I heard that!" Anna yells from her room, but it just makes them laugh harder. 

They're not going before ten, anyway (if there's something they learned from their time in the entertainment business, it's that there's no fashionably early), so they lounge on the couch, mocking the French dubbing of Gossip Girl. At least they don't need subtitles to grasp what's going on. 

Anna throws them a disapproving glance every time she crosses the living-room in increasingly elaborate states of dress. Around the tenth time, she has her dress on, and Harry watches Zayn blink a couple of times at her. She _is_ gorgeous, but then, she always was —this is just a bit of glossing over, at least for him. The green sheath is definitely doing something for Zayn, though. Harry leans over to whisper something inevitably crude in his ear, but Zayn catches him first and elbows him firmly in the ribs. 

After ten minutes of whining and complaining that Zayn has broken him forever, it's finally time to get dressed too. Harry puts his tux on with practiced ease, shaking his hair and tying his bowtie loosely against the crisp collar of his shirt. It does feel good to be back in a suit, unexpectedly —it's like coming back to their regular life, the ones where they go to premieres and award shows and spend months on the road, singing their lungs out. 

(Truth is, it's easy to get lost in the indolence. Paris has this peculiar power of making you forget where you come from and that you want to leave — it keeps you in a vague, entrancing embrace, cajoles you into resting your head in its bosom, just for a minute, a minute…)

Zayn pulls off the suit as well as he always does. Harry'd already seen him in it in the shop, but some reason it feels different now, in the low orange glow of Anna's living-room lamp. The fabric hugs his ribs like it's made for him, managing to look sharp and seamless at the same time. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, drawn back to the habit as he slips back into his old skin. 

"I need a cigarette," he says. Harry blinks to chase the vision of him standing behind the church that day, looking into a horizon Harry couldn't see. 

Anna laughs at them when she sees the result, ribs them for being posh fuckers. Zayn listens to her, smirk neatly squared at the angle of his mouth, and presents her with his arm. She takes it.

Harry lets them go before him. He watches them from up the stairs, resting his crossed arms on the railing, his eyelids drooping out of habit. They do make a great couple, he thinks, a looping comma of green and blue, her pale hand nestled in the crook of his elbow, his eyelashes inking a black shadow on his cheekbone, her lips shimmer pink and gold; they look great together, like they've just stepped out of a twentieth century party in West Egg, the big lights crackling behind them and illuminating the white walls of a manor.

He wishes he'd talked to Zayn about her earlier, when they were out. He should've told her that it wasn't a problem, not with him and certainly not with Nick and Alexa, they're a pretty incestuous bunch anyway, always sleeping with their friends. Harry should know. He can't really say that to Zayn now, though, so he settles for clapping slowly when they walk down the stairs, arm in arm. Zayn rolls his eyes at him but Harry doesn't stop, keeps clapping in rhythm with the sharp click of Anna's heels on the stone. 

They've hired a car to go to the other side of the city, where her friend's house is. Harry and Zayn have agreed not to splurge —especially seeing how obsessed Zayn is with the whole roadtrip etiquette thing—, but they've made an exception because they didn't want to crumple their nice suits on the metro seats and taking a cab to go this far would probably end up being the same price as hiring a car (more or less, Anna smiled, but they both shrugged). 

"This better be good," Harry says, throwing a glance at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He's okay. He looks a little shaggy, but he pulls it off. Besides, he's famous enough for shagginess not to be an issue. Zayn crosses his gaze in the mirror and smirks at him. Harry sticks his tongue out. 

"You guys are such children," Anna laughs. "I can't believe you."

They trade friendly jabs all the way to the house, so much that the driver even joins in, first to tell them to please talk a little lower and then to rib them right back. It turns out he's an actually decent bloke, a guy named Isaac who studies publishing in one of Paris' five hundred universities. Only once he starts talking does Harry remarks that he's good-looking, too. Not that it's an astonishing rarity in Paris, where pretty much everyone seems to have inherited good genes from their parents, but he has this kind of certain something that's gotten Harry in trouble with Paul more than once. 

"How old did you say you were again?" Harry asks in the middle of the conversation, trying to sound casual. Better safe than sorry. 

Isaac looks surprised for a second, then smiles at Harry, quick and blinding. "Nineteen," he says, his accent strong and sharp. 

Zayn catches his gaze in the rearview mirror again; this time his smirk is the same, except with a little warning. They really don't need a media scandal while they're on vacation, especially just before starting the promotion for the new album. In fact it might well be the last thing they need. 

It makes Harry think about how they're all taking it in stride, the fact that Harry's slept with about as many guys as he has girls. It's been an issue before: Louis has been accused of being gay and has always reacted violently, which is stupid but warranted given how stupidly stereotyped the roots of the rumour are; Zayn obviously has troubles coming to terms with it, otherwise they wouldn't be there. The others not so much: Liam is head-over-heels in love with Dani since pretty much the dawn of times and Niall just doesn't give a fuck, like he doesn't give a fuck about a lot of other things. It's a healthy outlook on life most of the time.

But no one ever said no to Harry. Maybe that's the whole story. No one ever said no when he asked them for sex, or for affection, or for money; even the label didn't freak out too much the first time they discovered that he'd slept with a guy, only told him to keep it quiet. It's probably a case of being in the good place at the good time, but it's probably got to do with his general behaviour, too: the way he appears to shag everything that moves with ease and a certain gentlemanliness, whether or not he actually does it. It's not really a good reputation to have; Harry wonders if Zayn ever feels jealous. 

He doesn't want to think about it though, at least not now, so he turns his attention back to Isaac the driver. He has sharp cheekbones, long lashes, brown eyes. Pretty average as far as Paris goes, especially seeing as the party is mostly comprised of models, but he sounds smart. That's always a draw for Harry. 

"Was there anything else you wanted to know, sir?" he asks, having clearly caught up to Harry's wholly unsubtle evaluation.

Harry smiles his most dazzling smile at him. "I do, actually," he says. Isaac smiles back. Yep, definitely gay. The whole getting laid thing is looking pretty good. "Are you the one that's coming to get us after the party?"

"That could be arranged, sir," Isaac says, licking his lips. Harry wants to laugh, but he remembers being nineteen — hell, it wasn't that long ago. He was over-enthusiastic too. He did things like lick his lips for strangers and believe in true love. He wouldn't want to go back, but it was nice while it lasted. 

"Yeah, please," Harry says, and then the car's pulling over and they're there. 

The house is — well, it's not really a house. It looks more like a hotel or a residence, the stones cut in baroque curlicues on every side. It's beautiful in a queer, distinctly French way: because they're half in the country and half still in the city, because the windows are open and there's a stream of light and music coming out of it, because there are people spilling out the door every so often, drunkenly graceful in a way British people that aren't A-list celebrities simply aren't. 

Harry gives Isaac a last smile (and his number, were he unable to make it tonight — as much as Harry believes in flirting for flirting's sake, it would be a shame to let such a good opportunity go to waste) and slips out of the car. He lets Zayn hold the door open for Anna, settling against the car door to watch the people who're trickling out of the house. They're all built like twigs, skeletal arms and legs dangling as they stumble uncoordinatedly, but Harry finds a certain poetry to them, their long eyes and bruised mouths. He always likes to hold them in his arms, too, not necessarily to fuck but just to dance, because their feet never seem to touch the ground; they're always somewhere else, their heels barely strapped to their ankles. Their shoes don't slip off and they don't slouch, but they weigh nothing on his chest. 

Anna lights up when they walk into the house. Harry can't decide whether it's because she's got her work smile on or because she's happy to find her own, but he spares a second to find her beautiful under the new lighting, where aristocratic melts into mellow and haughty slips into liquid. Zayn follows suit; he too melts under this new spotlight, but it's a more subtle transformation. His eyelashes drip on his cheeks. 

There's a round of flurry introductions. Kisses are being pressed to cheeks, necks, shoulders; names are being exchanged and immediately forgotten. Harry watches it all happen, smiles when he's being recognized, gives a twirl to a few girls. 

He approaches one of them, a bored-looking Asian girl. "Would you direct me to the bar, doll?" he asks with his sweetest smile. 

She snorts; it doesn't quite succeed in making her ugly. "Yeah, sure," she says, blinking with difficulty. She points to a vague direction on their right. "Just in front of the dance floor, you can't miss it. Search for the preppy ones and the whores. You'll need alcohol to survive this, believe me." She pats his arm patronizingly, then turns away.

Harry follows her directions. He tries to reconcile her veteran attitude with her face; she must've have been, what, twenty? Twenty-five maybe, beneath the make-up. This kind of thing always seems strange to him; he always ends up wanting to know what happened to them. 

He finds the bar easily enough and orders a gin tonic. 

" _Ca arrive_ ," the barista says. Harry tries to determine whether they're a he or a she or something else, but gives up after a few seconds. Who cares, after all? Certainly not those people. 

He leans against the bar, scanning the crowd for Zayn and Anna out of guilt for abandoning them. But those parties are a jungle, Zayn knows that; besides, he doubts Zayn needs him to be there while he chats Anna up. Harry doesn't.

He scans a few faces without registering them. The effect of names on him is pretty much naught after so many years; the only faces he would really be surprised to see here would be Alexa's or Nick's, since he knows for certain that they're back in London. As it happens, though, he spots Cara in the crowd that's writhing on the dance floor, her thick eyebrows knit in concentration as she shakes her hips against someone's groin — Harry is too far to see if he knows them, since they have their back to him, but there's a lot of glitter. 

He pays for his drink, gulps it down and starts making his way through he crowd. He eventually gets to Cara through liberal use of his elbows. 

"Hi," he says, breathless, plastering himself to her side. It occurs to him, a little too late, that she might have been in trying to pull whoever it is she's dancing with —a long, leggy blonde, from what he can see— but familiarity between friends or even acquaintances is par for the course in the fashion world, so they can always pass it off as enthusiasm over reuniting. Besides, if she really wants to sleep with Leggy Blonde, Harry doubts she'll have any difficulty getting her way. 

"Harry!" Cara exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck and smacking a loud kiss on his lips. "What are you doing here?"

"Holiday," he says from where he is, crushed in her sweaty neck. He licks a trail through the glitter and she squirms away, screeching. 

"That's great," she giggles. She's completely smashed, but he lets her giddiness sweep him in, easy as breathing. He's good at this. There's no judging, no sizing each other up, and maybe that's why he doesn't handle his relationships well —nothing's ever as easy as this.

She settles in his arms, her back against his chest, gyrating her hips slowly, charmingly offbeat. It's like they're in their own little private world, him and her and Leggy Blonde whose neck she's circling with her arms, pulling her in, always closer. 

Leggy Blonde's head ends up slotted on Harry's shoulder, her lips a few inches away from Harry's ear. "Hi," she says with a slight accent. Her eyelids are heavy; she's more beautiful than Harry had noticed at first, and that's rare enough for Harry to focus on her. She has a mole on the right side of her plump, glossed mouth. Her hair is pulled in a bun at the nape of her neck but strands slips out of her hairtie every time she moves a little.

"You're gorgeous," Harry says at the same time as she says, "Hi."

They laugh. Cara groans somewhere in the girl's chest, face mashed in her cleavage. "What about me?"

"You're gorgeous too, Car," Harry says. She disengages herself from the girl's chest and twists her neck to kiss him again. Her lipstick smears on his lips. "You're pretty," Cara says softly. If the girl's eyes are any indication, she thinks so too. 

He just feels so good there. It isn't dirty and it isn't empty, whatever people say; there's warmth and friendship and this heavy stream of lust that runs through their veins and that they acknowledge so easily. Maybe it's just the people Harry hangs out with, but he never ends up feeling uncomfortable, or lost, even when he wakes up on a doormat at three AM. He always feels safe. It's different from being with the boys, huddled on a mattress in the bungalow (they still do that every year like the sentimental bastards they are), but it's good all the same. 

"I have to go pee, guys," Cara says after a moment, tearing herself away from their joined arms. It's like tearing a sticker, for a minute they feel empty and cold, but then the crowd closes in again to fill the void and it's like she never existed. A thought fizzles in Harry's brain, crushed by the heat. 

He thinks about asking the girl for her name but he can't find a way or a reason to do it, so he doesn't. Everything is okay now. She steps forward, presses against him. She's not a girl, in the end, but it doesn't matter. Not a lot matters. They dance and laugh and he can't keep track of time or events. He remembers vaguely coming back to the bar with Cara and downing three shots of tequila, then there was a bottle of beer, and this…

"Don't you want to know my name?" the guy—girl—who cares— asks, sounding amused. 

"No," Harry says. "Do you want to tell me?"

"I should be fine."

Her lips are quirked like Harry's some private joke he's the only one not to get. If he were more sober he wouldn't be offended about it either (you learn not to be too prideful when you're in a boyband), so the fact that he's plastered doesn't really make a difference. 

They dance again. The music pounds into Harry like an overenthusiastic hook-up, the guy's hands trailing spider fingers up his spine. 

"It's the other way around, usually, you know," Harry says when he feels nails at the nape of his neck and a hard shiver runs through him. 

The guy laughs, throaty and mocking. "Thanks," he says. "There's not much to touch, anyway," he adds, slapping Harry's arse. Harry makes a little offended noise. 

Cara's disappeared somewhere in the crowd. Harry sees her resurface from time to time, each time with different hands on her waist and her head bowed like she's trying to dive into her interlocutor's chest headfirst. 

Harry doesn't really see it coming, but one minute he's grinding his half-hard dick against the guy's thigh and the next there's a tongue in his mouth, wicked and sharp and seemingly intent on scrubbing the breath out of him.

"Wow," Harry says when he pulls away. He wipes his mouth only to find lipgloss on the back on his hand, mixed with the saliva and the glitter. The guy smirks.

"Take this to the…?" Harry says, gesturing to the bathroom. 

The guy pouts. He really does look like a girl, Harry notices offhandedly, little things like the way he holds his wrists and the way his hip is cocked to the side, the tilt of his head. It's amusing to think that maybe the only thing separating women and men, in the end, is their balance. The way they stand. 

"No," the guy says. "I want to dance. I love this song."

Harry doesn't mind. "Okay," he says. 

The guy wraps long fingers around his wrist and pulls Harry closer so they're chest to chest, not dancing as much as hovering vaguely around each other. It's not as awkward as it could be —the dance floor is packed, and the music is too loud for them to think about being embarrassed, to do anything more than just go with the flow. Harry drops his head against the guy's collarbone for a second —God he's tall— and he feels his hand span the small of his back and settle against his ribs, holding his waist like Harry's some kind of maiden. It's weird but nice, which really defines the whole situation pretty well. 

The guy says something Harry doesn't hear, a blur of tangled syllables. 

"What?" Harry says, squinting up. 

"My name," the guy smiles. "It's Andrej, if you want it."

Harry wants to be pissed —he kind of liked the anonymity of it all— but curiosity gets the better of him. He likes the feel of the name, the way Andrej pronounces it with the 'j' melting and rolling on his tongue. 

"Mm," he says. He wraps his arms around Andrej's neck, thumbs coming to brush his jaw. "Nice name," he mumbles. "'M Harry."

Andrej laughs again and pulls Harry close, fitting their mouths together in a swift, unrehearsed movement. The ground under their feet is shaking with the new Calvin Harris beat, regulating their heartbeats and the rhythm of the collective writhing. 

There are a few things Harry loves more than kissing, even when it doesn't lead to sex —just the way it can be so many different things at once, lips chapped or smooth or frantic or leisurely, breathing melting into pants, sometimes words. When he was with Nick —well, he was never _with_ Nick, but close enough— they sometimes used to spend hours on the sofa in the afternoon, snogging lazily between episodes of The Great British Bake-Off. In retrospect, it's probably one of the things Harry liked the most about their non-relationship. 

"You're a good kisser," Andrej says against his skin, biting the flesh of his cheek.

Harry murmurs a thanks and drags him close as the music picks up. They follow the pace, stomping their feet and twisting their hips. Harry thinks he sees Cara somewhere in the crowd again, her eyes shut and swaying to the beat, but as soon as he spots her she vanishes again, sucked in by the crowd. Harry lets himself be subsumed. He's at a party in Paris after all, surrounded by fancy drinks and people who don't care about who he is because they're used to it and the most reaction they give popstars is a roll of the eyes and a little smirk. Louis wouldn't hate it here.

Andrej manoeuvres them through the crowd until Harry's back is pressed against one of the walls, the music making it thrum and tremble. Andrej's tongue traces the seams of his lips; Harry doesn't hear his own groan as much as he feels it buzzing like electricity in the cracks of his lips, between them. They're both half-hard but Harry doesn't feel the urge to take care of it, he likes the sweet ache, the sharp edge it gives to the way they kiss, a little like the sharp teeth Andrej sometimes sinks in his flesh, almost playful. 

He feels like he's got vertigo. His head is spinning but it's not unpleasant. Andrej's hands skim on his ribs, surprisingly gentle. He's got model hands, long and knobbly, and Harry thinks he spotted the small flash of yellow varnish in the strobe lights earlier. 

Harry doesn't register when exactly someone pulls Andrej back. He does a little pirouette on himself, his glittery heels sparkling in the half-darkness. His mouth stretches into a smile. 

"Erika," he says. Harry knows enough models to know that this smile isn't his work smile: it isn't half as pretty as it would be if it were, and there's teeth showing and it's all a little disorderly. Harry feels like he's intruding, which is a little weird since his tongue was in Andrej's mouth twenty seconds ago. 

They hug. Harry stays in place for a second; they're both gorgeous enough for it to be a spectacular sight, kind of like Cara and Alexa when they're together and you don't really know where to look from so much beauty in one place. Erika and Andrej seem to be some sort of opposites: she —he's going to assume they're a she, though at this pointit's more for the hell of it than because he's got any sort of strict gender structure— looks like a really beautiful boy and Andrej looks like a beautiful girl, and they're both lanky with high cheekbones and full lips. God, these model parties always make Harry feel like he's in some sort of parallel universe. 

He slinks away when they hug again, fading in the pounding obscurity. He doesn't really mind, it's not like he can't have his pick here, and besides, he's never been the jealous type. There are enough people on the planet for everyone to get what they want eventually, he figures. Though go explain that to Zayn. See, that's exactly why he doesn't believe in true love. 

He drifts in the crowd for a few minutes, letting himself be swung between partners, faceless boys and girls of whom he only catches indistinct features when they twirl him or plaster themselves against his back. That's why he feels the best on club nights, not belonging to anyone and belonging to everyone at the same time, to the music and the glitter and the night outside. It's an exhilarating feeling. 

When he starts not being able to feel his feet he manages to extricate himself from the crowd and returns to the bar, panting. He does a vague crowd-check for Cara or Zayn and Anna, assuming they're even still together, but either he's too drunk or there are just too many gorgeous people, and he can't spot them. 

“Perrier,” he asks the bartender. He gets an arched eyebrow that spells 'really now' a little too clearly but he doesn't give a fuck. He's too old for alcoholic coma. 

He gets his Perrier (cum disdainful snort) and sips it in a corner until he regains a more or less clear consciousness. He looks at the moving crowd and lets the seasickness take him too; when he closes his eyes it's hard to register anything but the music, the conversations around him fading to a vague, buzzing whisper. 

He doesn't really follow what happens in the next few hours. He's pretty sure he says hello to about three hundred people, all of them more gorgeous than the one before, looking from completely indifferent to mildly interested. He thinks he has one or two fascinating conversations about the meaning of life and vodka, one of them with the bored-looking Asian girl from the beginning of the night. At some point Zayn and Anna reappears and they hang around for a few minutes before they vanish again, this time apparently for good, and Harry tells more about his life to the bartender than he wants anyone in the world to know. At least, given the way she'd rather be anywhere but here, he's pretty sure it won't end up in the tabloids. All in all, it's a good night.

At least until he wakes up with literally no idea where he is, or who he's with. He would say he at least remembers how he ended up in a bed in a house he doesn't know in the middle of the night, but it would be a lie, so. 

He sits up. He checks for any signs of obvious defiling, but apparently his virtue is intact. Phew. 

“Um, hi?” he says to the darkness. He blinks to try to accommodate his eyes, in vain. “Is there anyone here?”

Well, at least he's not tied to a chair in a cave. Could he worse. God, his head is pounding. He's never drinking again. 

Something moves next to him. Harry nearly brains himself on the night-table when he jumps. “Bollocks,” he says, a hand clamped over his heart. “Fuck.”

When he finally turns to look at what exactly moved (he never claimed to be brave, okay) it turns out only to be the tousled-haired, very cutely frowning driver. He looks a little confused. He blinks, but it doesn't seem to do much for him either. 

“Hi?” Harry repeats. 

Seeing a popstar in his bed seems to wake a few braincells, because he sits straight too, a flush going straight to his cheeks. He turns the lights on, wincing in chorus with Harry. “Oh God, hello. I am sorry, you must be so confused.” 

His accent is still thick and he's still almost unbearably sweet, in addition to being very, very attractive, which is a few hundred points improvement over the bearded rapist Harry was half-expecting. “Uh, yeah,” he says. "Kind of."

The driver crosses his arms on his chest. “Uh, I came to get you, but—”

Harry winces, pressing his palms over his ears. “God, not so loud.”

“Sorry,” the driver says sheepishly. What was his name already? That's it —Isaac. “Sorry,” he repeats, lower, “you were drunk, and you would not tell me the code when we got to your house, and I didn't have your friends' phone numbers, and then you fell asleep on the backseat, and I don't have that much job experience, so I figured I would just… let you sleep here until you got a little better.” He scratches the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed.

“Thank you,” Harry says, trying to sound as grateful as he can. He groans when he tries to move. “God, I'm never drinking again.”

Isaac arches an eyebrow.

“Okay, I'm probably drinking again," Harry amends. "I'm never drinking cocktails made by models 'because they like the colours' again, though.”

Isaac smiles. “Sounds like a smart choice. Are you okay? Do you want an aspirin or something?”

“Yeah, please,” Harry says. 

Isaac leaves the bed and disappears into the bathroom. Harry takes the opportunity to examine his surroundings. It looks everything like what he'd imagine a student's room in Paris to look like, cupboard-small with a tiny window and interior spartan and mostly bare if for a few photos of what Harry assumes are of family. A wave of longing overwhelms him for a second: after all this is the life he could've had if everything hadn't —well. He's not going to complain now. God knows he's got it better than most everyone. Besides, Harry makes it a point not to regret anything, given how regret's useless and most of the time fruitless as well.

“Found it!” he hears coming from the bathroom. 

Isaac reappears bearing aspirin and a welcome bottle of water. He's only wearing sweats, slung low on his hips, and for the second time in the evening Harry remarks that he's rather fit. If only he was in any state to do anything about it God knows he would. 

“Here,” Isaac says, giving Harry a glass to pour his water in. He watches Harry gulps it down with the aspirin, then yawns. “Do you mind if we wait for the morning until I take you home? I've returned the car and I don't have one myself, and I have school in the morning.”

Harry winces. “Yes, of course. Sorry, you're going to be knackered…”

Isaac waves it away, yawning again. “Don't worry about it, I'll be fine. Do you mind sleeping in the same bed? I would offer to sleep on the couch, but as you might have noticed, I don't actually have one, so…”

Harry laughs. “I'm one fifth of the gayest former boyband in the universe, I've slept platonically with boys before. I'll be fine.”

Isaac looks like he's going to ask about non-platonic sleepovers for a second, but he just smiles. “Great, thanks.” He slips back into the bed. 

Harry takes off his tuxedo pants (he's still trying to figure out if Anna was playing a joke on them with this one or if French model really do consider tuxes appropriate club wear), which are getting itchy, as well as his various items of jewellery. “Thank you,” he says as he settles on the mattress next to Isaac. The bed is narrow, but they're both quite slim, so they manage. Harry's always been a big fan of snuggling, anyway. 

Isaac turns the lights off. “ _Bonne nuit_ ,” he mumbles. 

Harry smiles in the darkness. “Night.” Then, after a moment spent looking at the ceiling, he adds: “We can fuck tomorrow if you want.”

Isaac gives a short, surprised chuckle, but it's more exhaustion than anything else. “Yes,” he says, burrowing deeper in the mattress, and that's that. 

*

They end up not fucking at all. Harry is starting to feel like he's lost his mojo, what with not managing to conclude twice in a span of twenty-four hours, but mostly he feels fine, so he can't bring himself to care all that much.

He wakes up at half past six. The sun is barely out, the entire world wrapped in pale, blinding shadows. Harry very much wants to die. 

“What?” he intends to say, but what comes out of his mouth is more like a confused-sounding garble. Harry can't say he really cares. It _is_ six and a half in the morning, after all —or at least, that's what the alarm says. 

When he finally cracks an eye open, he meets Isaac's face. He winces. “Sorry,” Isaac says, mirroring his wince. “I've got to go to class. Can you, uh, let yourself out and take a taxi, or I can take you back if you wait for me for, like, two hours?”

He really is too nice for his own sake. Harry manages a lopsided smile. “'ll be fine, I'll let myself out, don't skip class for my sake. You late yet?”

Isaac gives him a relieved smile. Yep, it's a shame they didn't fuck. Oh, well. Attractive people are a dime in dozen in France anyway, and it's not like charm and celebrity make it hard for Harry to pull. “No, I'm fine. You want breakfast?”

Harry mostly wants to die or go back to sleep, and it's definitely too early to be hungry, but he nods anyway. The boy did bring him back here when Harry was drunk, feed him Aspirin and let him sleep in his bed, Harry owes him at least a little company. “Sure,” he groans. “Gimme a second.”

“I'll be in the kitchen.”

Breakfast for the French, as it turns out, means bread with jam and not much else. Harry is a bit surprised, though he shouldn't be, but they've been staying with Anna and she eats normal breakfasts, God bless her. Harry's lucky the boy doesn't speak exclusively French to top it all off. 

He eats a slice or two of untoasted bread anyway and makes monosyllabic conversation, which seems to be alright with Isaac. It's actually comfortable, sitting face to face with this near-stranger at the crack of dawn. Harry feels like he might fall back asleep any second, but it's nice. Go figure.

Eventually it's time for Isaac to go and he gives Harry a look, like he's not really sure what to do with him. It's awkward for a second, but then Harry grins and holds out his hand. “It was nice to meet you,” he says. 

Isaac smiles back. He ignores the hand and goes for the traditional Parisian two kisses instead, one on each cheek. Harry does his best not to be charmed. “Have a nice life, then,” Isaac says, his breath tickling the shell of Harry's ear. 

“And you.”

"You can leave the key in the mailbox."

Harry nods. He watches Isaac pick up his messenger back and walk to the door. He tries to imagine him for a second, picking up his bike and biking to his school, meeting his friends and talking about whatever it is they talk about, and then walking into a classroom and—

“Hey,” he says before he can check himself. “C'mere.”

Isaac looks a little surprised, and he gives his watch a nervous look, but he obeys anyway. “ _Quoi_?” he says. 

“Just—” Harry says, and he brushes his thumb against Isaac's cheek and brings him close for a kiss. It's sweet and lingering, the kind of domestic kiss that Harry shares with the boys all the time, that doesn't really mean anything in and of itself. It's to say thank you and Harry likes saying thank you, likes having things to thank people for. He adds a hint of tongue to be mischievous but mostly it's a sweet, jam-flavoured morning kiss, almost platonic. 

He pats Isaac's shoulder when he pulls away. “Thanks,” he repeats, softer. 

Isaac looks like he might say something, but he doesn't. He picks his bag up again and makes a little wave near the door, his lips nicely wet, and he leaves. 

Harry stays at the table for a few moments, munching absently on his bread. He thinks about going back to sleep for a bit, but he's not really tired enough to zonk out with that light, even though his head's still hurting like hell. Besides, he's not really a fan of sleeping in other people's beds if they're not in it too. 

He goes back to the bedroom and puts his clothes on. God, he can't wait to take a shower. He'll do it at the flat —that and sleep for another twenty-four hours once he gets his hands on Zayn and ropes him into closing the blinds for him and cuddling. He checks his phone but it ran out of battery during the night. He figures Zayn won't be worrying too much: either he's with Anna and he has other, and better, things to worry about, or he isn't and he knows what Harry's like anyway. 

He thinks about going back by foot, but he has no fucking idea where he is and he would be too tired to enjoy the scenery. He scrawls a smiley face on a sticky note he finds on Isaac's desk and sticks it on the pillow, then leaves, checking he hasn't forgotten anything, then closing the door carefully and dropping the key in the mailbox like Isaac told him to.

It's still a little chilly outside, the heat barely breaking in. The people milling in the streets are silent and blank-faced, probably still thinking about the night's dreams or already absorbed in their work schedules. It's too early for the flood of museum-visiting, flip-flops-wearing tourists, and Harry enjoys this peculiar city silence that only exists at this hour in metropoles, when the only things that are said are whispered and people look at each other like they're perpetually surprised not to be alone. 

Harry walks to the metro slowly, looking around him. A few signs tell him that he's in the 19th district, a long way from the core of the city, where Anna lives. It's certainly less romantic, but it has its outer-city charm too, though it's nothing to do with the London suburbs. It's still very French, in a way. 

He spots a bakery and queues behind a fat woman in a blue pantsuit to get something real to eat. The French might not know how to cook a _breakfast continental_ , they're still the authority when it comes to pastries. 

Harry points to a golden-glazed pastry in one of the corners of the display, trying to decipher the sign. “Um, a… _pain au raisin_ , please,” he says. “ _S'il-vous-plaît_ ,” he adds, just in case. 

The woman gives him a look from over her small round glasses but seems to understand him, since she picks the pastry up and wraps it up gingerly. “ _Un euro quatre-vingts, s'il-vous-plaît, monsieur_ ,” she says in a bored tone. 

When faced with Harry's blank fish eyes, she points to the cashier machine, where a square, orange '1, 80' is blinking. “Oh, okay,” Harry says. He fishes in his wallet for the necessary coins, manages to find what he thinks are the right ones, and gives them to her. 

She gives him back his change and he walks out, unwrapping his pastry as he does and sinking his teeth in it. God, why don't they have those in Britain? They could certainly use them. He sits on a bench to finish it, staring blankly at the passers-by. Strange, that he should end up here. But maybe that's what traveling is about, after all. Seeing the reality of a country, not just its pretty bridges and quaint little libraries. 

The metro ride is rather glib. Everyone is still in their morning daze, Harry included, ruminating on slow thoughts. He wonders if Zayn will be back at the flat, what he'll have to tell. Harry doesn't think he misjudged the situation when he assumed that he and Anna were interested in each other (he's pretty good at estimating that sort of thing), but then again, maybe Zayn is more into guys that he let on and Anna is a model, so who knows how she thinks? They're always so unpredictable. 

He's at the station before he can think about it twice, and he hurries out of the tunnels. It's hot outside but the street is better, looks more like the Parisian dream Harry can't help but be fond of. He walks down the street to Anna's flat, the taste of raisin still in his mouth and his nostrils full of early-morning warmth and coffee smells. He thinks about sitting in a coffee shop and watching everyone wake up as they walk him by, but in the end his muscles are aching and he still badly wants a shower, so he decides against it. 

He's climbing the stairs to Anna's flat when he spots a tiny shape in the soft shadows of the staircase. It's the little girl from the other day: it seems like she's tamed the cat, and it's purring at her feet as she strokes it, her pudgy little hands kneading its fur.

" _Bonjour_ ," Harry says.

Her head shoots up. She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't look scared either. The cat seems to hesitate between being spooked and staying here being petted, and chooses the petting.

Harry smiles. " _Ca va_?" He doesn't really know why he's bothering to initiate conversation, given that he's just exhausted his French repertoire, but it doesn't matter.

" _Ca va_ ," the girl says after a while. She taps the stairs next to her. " _Tu veux t'asseoir?_ "

Harry nods and goes to sit next to her, hands on his knees, trying to remember his high school French. " _Tu… c'est matin. Ecole?_ " he asks. He grimaces a little to indicate that he's not really good at this and she laughs, making a funny face in return.

" _Maman est en train de se préparer_ ," she says. " _Elle a dit que je pouvais jouer ici en l'attendant._ " She shrugs. " _J'ai pas faim._ "

Harry nods. He reaches a hand to touch the cat, too, but it whips its head round and hisses angrily at Harry. Harry starts, surprised. 

"Wow."

The little girl laughs. " _Il aime pas les gens, que moi. Il s'appelle Cornelius._ "

"What? Corn—"

" _Cornelius._ "

" _Oh, d'accord._ It's… nice name." He points to her. " _Toi?_ "

She frowns. " _Quoi? Oh, ouais. Je m'appelle Clara._ " She holds out her tiny hand and he shakes it, smiling. 

"Harry," he says in return. 

" _Ton copain est pas là?_ " she asks, and when confronted with his blank stare, she makes a vague gesture towards her hair. " _Avec les gros cheveux,_ " she says, mimicking… a haircut? Oh, Zayn.

He shrugs. " _Je ne sais pas,_ " he says. "He can take care of himself, anyway," he says, forgetting about the language barrier, and when he looks at the girl she's back to stroking the cat's fur, looking wholeheartedly focused in her task. 

" _C'est ton amoureux?_ " she asks after a while, and had Harry not tried to be the perfect Valentine at that fateful time of his life, he probably wouldn't have recognized the word. " _C'est pas grave,_ " she adds earnestly. " _Ma tata Esther a une copine aussi, elle fait du bateau et des fois elles m'emmènent._ " 

Harry nods, charmed by her babbling, even though he's pretty sure he got about ten percent of it.

They're silent for a minute, and then he points to her and asks: " _Et toi?_ D'you have… a _copain?_ "

She looks at him with round blue eyes, confused. He thinks she hasn't understood, and is about to gesture to her to forget it —and then she bursts out laughing. " _T'es marrant._ " She points everywhere in a poor attempt at imitation, flailing. He tries to pretend to be irritated, but it's hard, especially when there's a smile tickling the corner of his mouth. 

Eventually she calms down. Her hair is all over the place, frizzy and electric; he kind of wants to tame it with his hands like he does with Lux but he's afraid it'll spook her.

" _Non,_ " she says, shaking her head vehemently to make sure he understand. " _J'en ai pas besoin._ " She points to the cat. " _J'ai Cornelius,_ " she says, as though it were that simple. And maybe it is. Maybe it is that simple.

"I like the way you think," he murmurs when she turns back to the cat. Her head whips around, her eyebrows raised, but he motions that it's nothing.

" _Il aime toi…_ too?" 

" _Bien sûr qu'il m'aime,_ " Clara says very seriously, her eyebrows scrunched up. " _Je le gratte derrière les oreilles mieux que tout le monde._ " She scratches behind the cat's ear and sure enough, he starts purring like a land-mower.

"Soulmates," Harry says, and when he can't explain it to her, he just points at her and at the cat and makes a clumsy heart with his fingers. 

They chat for a little while longer, Clara talking a hundred miles an hour and Harry nodding when he feels like it's needed. She's bright and happy and the cat looks more content than Harry has ever seen a cat look, so really it's all good. Thanks to his talents as a mime and a lot of mangled French, Harry manages to tell her a few stories too, like the time Louis and him went skiing and Louis made a snowman at the end of the track which everyone crashed in.

Eventually they hear a voice calling her name and she bounds to her feet. " _Je dois aller à l'école,_ " she says with a grimace. " _J'aime pas ça mais maman dit que je pourrais avoir une maison pour moi toute seule si j'y vais, donc bon…_ " She shrugs.

She's about to leave, dumping the cat on the stairs like a stack of potatoes (he doesn't seem bothered, though, they really must be soulmates) when she stops, as though remembering something. 

" _Dis bonjour à ton copain pour moi, d'accord?_ " She gestures messily at her hair, then at the stairs. " _L'autre jour il s'est assis là et il avait l'air un peu triste._ "

Harry nods. " _Salut!_ " He waves at her, watching as she crosses the little courtyard back to her house.

He stays on the stairs for a few minutes more, ignoring the cat who's watching him for a couple of stairs below, looking for all the world like he thinks Harry is the Antichrist now that Clara isn't there anymore. Harry's never been good with animals, but that's just insulting.

"Shut it," he hisses, then remembers that he's talking to a cat. It's probably time to leave. 

He groans when he stands up —too much sitting made his ass hurt something fierce, not to mention that honestly lumpy mattress— and shoots the cat a warning glance before he climbs the stairs back to the flat. He's a bit afraid he'll find Zayn and Anna in a compromising position, but knocking would be awkward and it's not like he hasn't seen Zayn's junk before, so he decides to take the chance. 

Thankfully, the only thing that seems to be going on when he comes in is the making of coffee, which Harry can totally get behind. He's relieved to find Zayn in the kitchen, standing near the coffee-maker dressed in sweats and a soft-looking T-shirt, turning his back at Harry.

"Nice bedhead."

Zayn turns around and smiles at him, running a hand through his hair sleepily. "Yeah, well, it's not the holidays for nothing, right?"

The coffee-maker pings and Harry watches as Zayn gets two mugs out of the cupboard and pours, looking perfectly at home in the bright kitchen. He hands Harry one of the mugs.

"How was last night?" he asks, more a routine question that trying to know what actually happened. 

"Fine," Zayn says. "You?"

"Yeah, fine."

Harry takes a gulp of coffee. It's how he likes it, strong but not too much, one sugar, the best substitute for tea. "The little girl from the stairs —her name is Clara—, she says hello."

Zayn raises an eyebrow. "Who?"

"You know, there was this kid on the stairs the other day… a redhead. Six or seven. With the cat."

"Oh, right."

Harry revels in the domesticity of the moment. He wonders for a second where Anna is, then decides it doesn't really matter. "She said to tell you hi, because you looked sad? She thought we were together."

That makes Zayn smile. "When did you get so fluent in French?"

"I kind of gesticulated my way through it," Harry shrugs.

The sun pours behind Zayn's back, smearing on the kitchen counter. "We should go soon," he says after a while, running a hand through his hair only to make it more tousled. "It's not a roadtrip if we don't actually _go_ places."

"This was nice, though, right?"

Zayn's eyes melt into something brown and tender. "Yeah, it was nice."

Harry yawns. He really _does_ need to sleep, and take this shower. "Any idea where you want to go?"

"What about you?"

"It's _your_ roadtrip, remember? You get to choose where we go. Soothe your existential heartache and all that."

"Piss off, my heartache isn't existential. Do I need to remind you about when you broke up with Taylor? It was like you'd turned into her for two weeks, pining on my couch with your Ben&Jerry's. Did you know the label actually called because they were afraid you were going to turn into a fatass?"

Harry thinks about saying something about gender roles and the expectations placed on celebrities, but Zayn's going to say it's psycho-bullshit anyway. "Alright, I give. Still, you have to choose."

"I don't know… do I have the day to think about it?"

Harry gulps down the rest of his coffee. "Nope. We're leaving tomorrow morning."

"What? I said we needed to go places, not to leave like our bloody ass is on fire!"

Harry shrugs. "You were right. The label's not going to let us wander around forever, and if we actually want to see places besides here, we should move."

"Okay, okay. I… Italy, then? I've never been to Italy."

"Even with school?"

"We went to Spain once, but it was a shitty school anyway. Bradford. We never really got anything fancy."

"Boo-hoo. You should donate to them, now that you have money coming out your ass."

Zayn shrugs. Harry doesn't push, because he knows what it's like, the suffused guilt. People always say they're going to give money to charities and African children when they're poor, but when money actually comes rolling in the only thing you want is to get the latest car on the market. It's kind of horrible, but it's the way it is, and the five of them certainly didn't change the way it goes. Money makes everyone jaded.

"So, Italy. Venice?"

"Are you kidding," Zayn deadpans. "I know we're not that famous anymore, but trust me, if we go to Venice the papers will have a field day. Besides, I already told you I don't like water."

"Right. Well, speaking of water, I'm going to have a shower, I'm filthy. Tell me what you've decided I get out, okay? Thanks for the coffee."

Zayn nods, and Harry walks away, grabbing his towel on the way out. "And not Rome. Apparently it's horrible."

He hears Zayn's murmur of assent and heads for the shower. It wakes him up a little, and he decides during that he probably shouldn't sleep before the evening, so he doesn't upset his schedule more than he has to and so that they can at least do things during their last day here. He scrubs so hard he ends up a little pink, all the glitter and sticky drunkenness swirling down the drain.

He notices that his hair is a little long when he gets out, a towel slung around his hips. Maybe he should ask Zayn to cut it.

"Florence!" Zayn yells from the kitchen, interrupting his thoughts. "That okay with you?"

"Sure," Harry yells back. And it's really curly, too. It gets in his eyes; it's annoying. A little more and he'll have to tie it. Imagine that. Harry Styles with a ponytail. (Louis made him realize the error of his headband ways and made him swear always to consult him on haircuts, lest he make more inadvisable decisions.)

Zayn's sitting cross-legged on the couch on his laptop when Harry gets out, towelling his hair. He looks up, his eyes tracing Harry's body automatically. Harry wonders if he thinks he's attractive. They're all so used to each other.

"It's a bit of a drive to Florence. Do you mind?" 

"How many hours?"

"The Internet says between twelve and fourteen. So probably fourteen."

Harry gives a short laugh. "It's fine if we split it. We can plan it later, though. We better go now if we still want to do things here."

"Do you?"

"We should. Do you know where Anna is?"

Zayn nods, his eyes back on the computer. "Yeah, I saw her earlier this morning. She said she had to work and that she'd be back by six, I think."

"I heard there was this thing… the fly boats or something? Like, touring the Seine or some shite. Could be nice."

"Sure, let me grab a T-shirt."

They head out. It's still sunny, a nice change from the UK. The street is abuzz with activity, early-morning conversations and shopkeepers organizing their displays, already more lively than when Harry was getting home earlier. Harry feels like he could be part of something like this, say hello to everyone. It's not hard to feel like you would fit in. 

The banks of the Seine aren't far enough that they have to take the metro, or at least it's what their map is telling them. Considering they're both as bad at reading maps as the other, they might be wrong. The city is lovely, though, so Harry doesn't really care where they end up either way. 

They were right, though, for once, and they get there in a matter of minutes, chatting about everything and nothing. Zayn stops at the stalls to check out the books and the amateur paintings on the pavement. Harry follows without really paying attention, looking over the bannister at the dark water of the Seine and the gliding boats. A stone bridge stands in the near horizon, next to the big cathedral. It's like everything is so near; London feels big even at the beginning, when you don't know it well. 

There aren't many things Harry actually remembers from the early days of the band's celebrity, but moving to London is one of them. It was still early, they weren't superstars yet, just the runner-ups of the X-Factor getting ready to make their debut album, but they all had to move there anyway. They only got the flats later, spent the first few weeks in hotels paid for by SYCO; Harry remembers going out and being a little awed, playing it off to impress the boys. It was big for all of them, he knows because they talked about it later, in Harry and Louis's flat with vodka and pizza boxes strewn around them. They all came from little towns, and then this, and then it just kept growing bigger and bigger. 

"Look what I found!" Zayn calls. 

Harry blinks. Zayn is holding a VHS in front of him, smiling. Harry squints to decipher the name on the spine. _Toy Story_. He smiles. "Are you serious?"

"We have to get it! C'm'on, it'll be like a belated a wedding gift." It's like he's forgotten to be upset, Harry thinks; like Liam is just a friend he's happy to give a funny gift to, a friend he's glad to see married. It's probably at least half pretence, but it's nice to see.

"Zayn, you got him a three thousand pounds dishwasher as a wedding gift. For some reason I don't think a dusty VHS will enthral him."

"Shut your gob," Zayn says, and Harry barely has the time to devise an outraged face before Zayn turns back to the guy and tells him: "We'll get it."

The guy glances between the two of them but doesn't say anything. He must be used to eccentric tourists, anyway. He probably thinks this is Zayn's twisted idea of a romantic gift. The idea makes Harry laugh. 

"What?" Zayn says.

"Nothing."

Zayn looks like he's ready to insist to be let in on the joke, but he just shrugs and finishes off the transaction. He looks perfectly happy by the time it's done, hoarding the VHS like a treasure. He's smiling —it makes Harry wonder how long it's been since he's smiled like this, like he's daring everyone else to be happier than him. It makes Harry giddy by proxy. 

"C'mon," he says, slinging an arm around Zayn's shoulder. "We'll miss the noon boat."

Zayn melts into the embrace. Happiness works on him like a sugar high: when he's happy he doesn't need coaxing, he's mellow and pliable, he even volunteers conversation. It's a little strange at first, but once you get used to it it's the best thing about him. Harry doesn't think he's ever been more surprised than the first time he heard Zayn laugh, this incontrollable thing bubbling out of the shy guy in the corner, who'd been looking for all the world like he thought the five of them were doomed (to be fair, all the confidence Harry had in their chances wasn't due as much to their actual talent than to the fact that he's always confident he's going to win until he doesn't). 

They get the noon boat just in time. There are a few tourists on the top floor, but almost everyone is back on the banks for lunch. There's a couple speaking in German a few rows in front of them, and just behind an old French couple speaks of the Paris monuments like they know each and every one personally, almost like they helped build them. 

"I could see myself spending my life here," Harry says conversationally. He really could: he gets the easy charm and the stinginess equally, the language pleases him, and the overall atmosphere is pleasantly European. Harry loves America and its bombastic appeal, but in the end he's a boy from home. Can't take the continent out of, and all that. 

Zayn wrinkles his nose. "Nah," he says. He turns to Harry to smile, beam hiding into the corners of his mouth. "Not enough rain."

Harry makes a face. "You always complain about the rain."

Zayn shrugs. "Yeah, but I like it."

"Could you be more British? Seriously," Harry shakes his head, but he's smiling.

In the end they cuddle against each other and they watch the buildings pass them by, or maybe it's the other way around; they tune out the droning commentary about the landscape's history and which famous people died where. It's nice anyway, the slow current makes them sleepy and everything seems a little blurry, the contours of the Palais de Chaillot and the Concorde mellowing out before them.

"What are we going to do in Florence?" Zayn asks at some point. It starts Harry out of his drowsiness and he blinks, frowning when Zayn ruffles his hair. 

"Does it matter?"

Zayn shrugs. 

"I don't know, what you want. It's still your trip, you know. We can, like, cruise for pretty Italian girls and boys if you want." He gives Zayn a shit-eating grin, and Zayn noogies him, face crunching. Harry shrieks. 

"Let me go! Okay, no cruising, I got it, you're a sad old man and you'll end up a spinster with thirty cats. It's fine, whatever. Leave me alone."

Zayn relinquishes his hold over him as they pass by the Palace de la Justice. Harry shakes his hair back into place. "Anyway," he says, "we have to drive there first. It's going to take forever."

Zayn groans.

Harry jabs a teasing elbow in his ribs, but he miscalculates and Zayn ends up oofing, the elderly couple behind them looking over, half-startled and half-affronted. "Sorry, _pardon_ ," Harry says, to them and to Zayn. "It's not a roadtrip if you don't drive, genius," he says to Zayn. "You're so lazy."

"Not my fault you have the worst car ever designed for a roadtrip."

"Hey, don't diss the car!"

"I'm just saying, we could have rented one in Heathrow, but no, mister wants his Jaguar and now we have to drive it for fifteen hours and it'll be rotting hot."

Harry barks a short laugh. "God, do you ever stop complaining! I thought you'd gotten laid last night, but clearly not, if you're still being such a bitch."

That does make Zayn stop in his stride. There's kind of an awkward silence, which is weird in itself because nothing is ever awkward between them, usually —but then, this is probably already an exception, what with the whole trip being the unofficial forget-Liam party. "What about you?" Zayn eventually asks. 

"What?"

"What about you? Didn't you get laid yesterday night? Aren't you supposed to be less of a pain in the ass?"

And there it is, easy again. Harry wraps his fingers around Zayn's wrist and squeezes, making a mock-offended face. "I'll have you know I did nothing of the sort. I was a gentleman."

Zayn snorts. "You mean you were drunk and couldn't get it up."

"That, too."

Zayn laughs. 

"But he was very nice about it, even let me sleep in the bed—" He lets the sentence trail off, feeling guilty. He always feels guilty mentioning guys with Zayn. It was so comparatively easy for him, coming out as bisexual. It wasn't the best day of his life, of course, and the paparazzi were insufferable about it for a few weeks, but it's not like anyone was really surprised. They'd already seen him with Nick countless times, including one shot them almost-kissing outside his apartment, and Harry never made a secret of his pro-gay opinions. Didn't take much to put two and two together, and those who didn't want to already knew what they would think.

Now, though, Zayn can forget about doing anything himself. Not only did he date Perrie for almost two years and not that many people take kindly to bisexuality or even understand it, the person he happened to fall in love with is his straight bandmate; not to mention that the 'gay one in the band' position position is already taken. 

"Sorry," he says. 

Zayn waves a dismissive hand. "Stop worrying about that. I told you I don't care." He pastes a fake smile to his face. "Was he cute?"

Harry thinks about forcing him to talk about it for a second, but decides to play along. "Very?"

Zayn punches him on the arm. "You idiot."

Regardless, they don't say much after that. Harry doesn't tell him about the kiss, Zayn doesn't say if he did get it on with Ana or not; they sag against each other and watch the monuments as the boat glides past them, let the commentary drift into one ear and out the other. It's nice, in its own way.

It's already two in when they get to the end of their trip —they took the long one, that roundabouts back where they boarded. They thank the guide and disembark, walking slowly away from the boat, arm in arm. The tourists are getting lazy, milling aimlessly around monuments they no longer have the energy to go inside of, licking their sugar-sticky fingers and grinning slowly at each other, waving postcards to fill and sandwiches in saran wrap. It occurs to Harry, dimly, that for once they're not so different, not to remote. It makes him happy. 

He cuffs the back of Zayn's head, streaking his fingers through the wispy hair. "You wanna go home? This way we can leave before it's too late, otherwise we'll be too tired."

Zayn lets out a slow groan. He rubs his eyes. "Sure," he says eventually, turning to smile at Harry. "Let's go."

They make their way to the metro. They don't talk a lot but they sit side by side, vaguely bobbing their head as a homeless man sings French classics in a hoarse, strangely comfortable voice.

_Car on croit toujours, aux doux mots d'amour, quand ils sont dit avec les yeux…_

Harry rests his head on Zayn's shoulder and half-closes his eyes. The only thing he sees as the metro soars through the air is the buildings-cluttered horizon, smokeless chimneys mapping against the pink-streaked sky. His skin is stiff with sweat and leftover aches from the lumpy couch and fitful sleep of the night before. He rests his head on Zayn's shoulder, just for a second.

He starts out of what must have been sleep when Zayn shakes him gently. "We're there," he says just as the wagon whirs into the station, people standing up and elbowing their way to the doors. 

Harry yawns. He's not tired, not really —he better not be, with all the driving they have to do— but he feels peaceful, loose in his skin. He really did get used to this city, in the end, or maybe just its people, the loose atmosphere, this diffuse impression that nothing could disrupt the messy flow of life. A soft pang of regret hits him, and for a second he wishes they didn't have to leave. 

Zayn threads their arms together as they make their way up to the surface. When the emerge in the sticky-hot hair Harry has to close his eyes to counter the sharp light. Zayn laughs softly next to him. He ruffles his hair. "You okay?"

Harry nods. They start walking to the flat, Zayn humming something under his breath. It takes a few moments for Harry to realize that it's the song the homeless man was singing in the metro. 

"You know it?"

Zayn stops humming. "What?"

"The song. Where do you know it from?"

"Oh," Zayn says. He looks a little confused. "I don't know, my mum, I guess. She made us listen to all sort of shite when we were kids. It's a nice song."

"Yeah," Harry says. He'd like to know what it says, and he makes a mental note to ask Zayn to sing it for Anna so she can tell them. It's probably about love –—all French folk songs are about love, aren't they?

Anna isn't there when they come into the flat. Harry starts packing almost immediately, while Zayn makes them a pot of coffee to make sure they won't drop asleep on the road. He looks over at the window, folding one of his shirts with easy, practiced movements. He can't even begin to count the number of times he's packed, and it's a strange thing, how sometimes that translates into feeling like he never traveled at all, just visited the same overcrowded arenas over and over again.

"Coffee!" Zayn calls before he can dive deeper into self-pity. 

Harry grabs the map on the couch-bed and heads for the kitchen. When he walks in, Zayn is pouring coffee into Anna's coloured porcelain cups. He hands Harry the yellow one. 

"Thanks."

He dips his lips into the liquid before Zayn can warn him and immediately recoils. "Fuck," he hisses, setting the cup back on the table, trying not to spill any. "It's scorching hot."

"I was going to tell you," Zayn shrugs, but there's concern in his voice. "You want me to go see if Anna's got ointment in her medicine cabinet?"

Harry smiles at him, even though he suspects it ends up looking more like a wince. "No, I'm fine. Just, iced coffee next time, okay? It's more season-appropriate, anyway."

Zayn smiles. "I've heard the French don't believe in iced coffee."

Harry rolls his eyes. "I've heard the French are pompous snobs when it comes to food," he counters. 

"Touché." He takes a careful sip of coffee. He likes it burning hot, like his showers —it's one of the things about him Harry has never understood. He always looks like a giant crawfish when he comes out of the shower. "So, you got the map?"

Harry jerks out of his thoughts. "Yeah." He spreads the map on the table. "Okay, so if I got this right, we need to get the car back and then take the _périphérique_ at _Porte de Bercy_. Getting out of the city's going to be the hard part, I think, so we better leave as soon as we can. We'll have company anyway, but it's either that or leave in the night, and we've got about thirteen hours to go, give or take, so. I mean, it's like you prefer."

"I think I can survive a bit of traffic jam. As long as you don't insist on hipster douchy music, I'm fine."

"But—"

Zayn groans exaggeratedly. "Shut up."

Harry smirks, but he obeys, bending over the map again. "Okay, right, so, and then there's _L'Autoroute du Soleil_ for like, three hours." He starts folding the map up again. "We can figure the rest as we go."

" _L'Autoroute du Soleil_ ," Zayn repeats, rolling the words on his tongue. "That means Highway of the Sun, right?"

Harry lets a smile bloom on his lips and sidles up close to Zayn, slotting their ribs together like a puzzle. "Damn right it does," he says, tender. 

Zayn smiles back. "Well, there we go, then." He sets his cup —orange— on the wooden table. "You all packed up?"

"Pretty much. Just need to do a sweep of the house to make sure we haven't forgotten anything."

"We're waiting for Anna, right?"

Harry slants him a look. "Of course. We're not going to leave like thieves. Unless…?"

Zayn punches him lightly in the shoulder, flushing. "Shut up, you twat. What, do you think I knocked er up or something?"

Harry raises his hands in mock-surrender. "You said it, not me."

Zayn rolls his eyes, making shooing motions to force Harry out of the kitchen. "Go pack your shit instead of being a smartarse."

"You've got to put up with me for another thirteen hours, remember?" Harry shouts back cheerfully from the living-room.

"Don't remind me."

They fill the hour they spend packing and trying to think of things they might have forgotten in the apartment with light banter tainted with melancholy.

"It's a nice place, innit?" Harry hadn't realized he'd gotten so used to it in three days. The thought that he'll miss the creaky folding couch, Zayn's limbs tangled in his in this particular embrace, with the dip in the middle of the mattress, is somewhat shocking. But only ever spending two days in the same building —hell, the same _country_ — for years on end made his affection quick for the things he does like.

"Yeah," Zayn says, and the tone of his voice makes Harry look up; of course he understands. 

"We're not very good travellers, are we?"

"Nope," Zayn laughs softly. "I would even say we're bloody rubbish. We ought to be halfway to Vegas by now."

"Hey, my roadtrip, my rules."

"Changing your tune, are you?"

Harry shrugs unapologetically. They've drifted closer as they talked, and now they're close to the window, hips knocking together. The softening sunlight is falling on them, parcelled by the glass. 

"Hey," Harry says after a moment, nodding to something outside. Anna is crossing the road, her dress floating prettily around her knees. 

"Good." Zayn disentangles himself from Harry and Harry pretends to himself he doesn't miss the warmth, even though it's the middle of July and it's stifling hot more often than not. 

They're here to welcome her when she gets to the door, Zayn leaning against the doorjamb in his familiar slouch and Harry cross-legged on the couch, smiling. She laughs at them. 

"Not that I want to inflate your ego or anything, but you missed a career in modelling," she says to Zayn —or maybe to the two of them. 

She trails her fingers against Zayn's arm as she crosses the room and it strikes Harry as something intimate, even though it might not be. He does it all the time, too.

"We just wanted to see you before we went," Zayn says. 

"Oh, you're going so early? I thought you'd wait a little." She sniffs the air, her nose wrinkling up adorably. "D'you leave coffee for me?"

"Yeah, it's in the machine, it's probably not very hot, though," Harry says. "It's a long drive, we didn't want to be at it all day tomorrow. I don't know about Zayn, but I don't fancy driving the whole thing by night either."

"You're probably right. Do you know where you're going?"

"Florence."

Anna walks back into the living-room without her shoes and with a mug of coffee in her hand. "Oh, fancy."

She's undone her hair and Harry notices once time how beautiful she is. He hangs out with Cara and Alexa all the time, he's past getting slack-jawed and googly-eyed when beautiful women lean on his arm and laugh, but there's still something magical about being able to see strands of red hair brush Anna's cheek when soft wind drifts into the room.

"Yeah, Harry thought he'd go all romantic on me and take me to the museums and stuff," Zayn says, smirking lightly.

Harry pretends to be affronted. " _You_ chose, you jackass."

"Only under duress. I wanted to go to Venice."

"He's lying."

"I'm not lying!"

Anna gives them a fond look, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Are you sure you need to go right now?" she asks, pouting a little. 

"Yeah, sorry," Zayn says apologetically. "Any advice for the road?"

"French drivers are assholes."

They all laugh; then the silence floats down on them and they stay there for a second, poised in their positions as though they were trying to absorb the moment as thoroughly as possible, molecule by molecule. Eventually Anna half-closes her eyes and hums a little melody, something enticing and clear that Harry doesn't know and that reminds him of what Zayn was singing earlier.

"Hey, love," he says, and she startles, as though wakened up to the world she'd forgotten was there. He comes closer and lays a placating hand on her forearm. "Sorry." She gives him a smile, _it's alright_. "I was wondering, do you know… this song?" He starts humming the metro singer's song slowly, trying to replicated as well as he can, but now the French seems clumsy and he's self-conscious of the way his tongue trips over the strange syllables. " _Quand ils sont dits avec les yeux…_ "

Anna laughs, nodding her head. "Yeah," she says. "Everyone knows it. It's an old village folk song, you know, for parties? _La Saint-Sylvestre_ , this kind of stuff, over the fire, you know the drill."

"What's it about?"

"Oh, yeah, something like, basically there's this young girl who's in love with a Casanova type and it's about how her love isn't going to get her anywhere. But it's not sad. It goes… how can you not lose your head, when someone holds you boldly in their arms, because you always believe loving words, but they're told with the eyes… blah blah, it goes on."

"Thanks." Harry feels strange, like something's been laid to rest for once, has acquired meaning and will stay in that stagnant place in between melancholy and joy.

Zayn clears his throat, startling him out of his half-daze. "We should get going. We don't want the _Autoroute du Soleil_ to be too crowded."

"It's going to be," Anna warns, smiling at Zayn's accent.

Zayn gives a soft shrug. The sun hits his frame from behind, gives him a buttery halo and tacks long, thin shadows to his eyelashes. "We'll survive."

They gather their luggage slowly, picking up the few things they've actually acquired in the city, tuxedos excluded. Anna helps them do a last sweep of the house and promises to send them any items they might have left ("Except if it's popstar super-secrets," she jokes, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. "Then I might have to blackmail you.").

Eventually the three of them end up on the doorstep, Zayn and Harry with their rucksacks thrown over their shoulders and Anna regarding them with soft, somewhat sad eyes. "It was a pleasure to have you here," she says, and leans in to kiss both Harry's cheeks. 

"That's something I'll never get used to," Harry says as her perfume envelops him. 

"It's nice, though, isn't it?" Anna asks, mischievous. She kisses Zayn too, and pats his shoulder. "Well then. I'll see you, boys."

"See you," they answer in chorus, and start making their way down the steps. Harry wishes idly that the little girl —Clara— will happen to cross their way so he can say goodbye. 

"Zayn!"

They both turn around, surprised —Anna's still on the doorstep, watching them with her hands in folded over her ribcage. Her cheeks are a little red. "Come here," she says. 

Zayn hands his rucksack to Harry and Harry smiles as he takes it, but Zayn doesn't see it, too busy climbing the steps back up four by four. He hesitates for a moment when he gets in front of her, rocking on his heels, but she smiles and gives a soft chuckle, like she can't believe how ridiculous they're being. She twines a hand at Zayn's nape and he places his hands on her hips —Harry thinks about looking away but figures Zayn owes him for about everything, and there are few things Harry likes more than watching attractive people make out. 

The worst thing about it is how unbearably sweet they are — Hary isn't even sure there is tongue. He would whistle to try and show them they can take it up a notch, just in case they're being shy on his behalf, but he's afraid even that would spook them, so he just enjoys the show. Like he expected, they make quite the breathtaking couple, her pale shoulders dotted with summer freckles, his wiry frame moulded against her, eyes closed. 

They eventually pull away — thankfully before Harry has to do pull them apart bodily, which would've been embarrassing for everything. They hover for a second, looking at each other, and then Anna leans in and pecks Zayn on the lips, just once, quick. "Go," she mouths. 

Zayn obeys. He picks his rucksack in Harry's hands and throws him a look that says _very_ clearly that he will kill Harry if he so much as mentions what just happened. He throws a quick wave that Anna returns before slipping back in the apartment.

They make their way to the street. Harry feels a pang of melancholy at not having caught Clara, but he reasons that it's how trips happens — you meet people and then you forget them, until they're specks of the dust on the road you're travelling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The translation Anna gives for _Les Amants de St-Jean_ is an approximation, and what I would say if I were asked on the fly. You're welcome to check the real translation if you wish.
> 
> As for the rest of the French, most of it's pretty basic, but do ask if there's something you want translated.
> 
> And finally, I did live in Paris for two years and a half, but I'm in no way a genius at orientation, so if anything is where it shouldn't be, I heartily apologize. Please correct me and I'll try to fix it.
> 
> That's it! Sorry the long wait, and I hope you enjoy this!


End file.
